Exhibition Inspired by the Golden Record to Open at the Carter in 2024

Internationally celebrated Texas artist Dario Robleto’s solo exhibition Dario Robleto: The Signal debuts at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (the Carter) in May 2024.

Dario Robleto (b. 1972), Unknown and Solitary Seas (Dreams and Emotions of the 19th Century) (detail), 2018, earliest waveform recordings of blood flowing from the heart and in the brain during sleep, dreaming, and various emotional states (1874–96), rendered and 3D printed in brass-plated stainless steel; lacquered maple, and 22k gold leaf, Courtesy of the artist, © Dario Robleto

Known for his multidisciplinary, research-driven approach, Robleto’s work probes questions about the order of the universe and the human-made systems we employ to perceive and describe it. Spanning film, sculpture, and works on paper, Dario Robleto: The Signal represents the culmination of Robleto’s multiyear exploration of the Golden Record, the gold-plated phonograph disk containing sounds and images selected by a team at NASA to portray life on Earth to extraterrestrials. Part of the Voyager Interstellar Message Project, the Record is currently traversing the sun’s outer reaches aboard the twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, launched into our solar system in 1977.  Supported by related sculptures and works on paper, the centerpiece of the exhibition is Robleto’s newly commissioned work Ancient Beacons Long for Notice, an immersive, sixty-minute film based on a rare and forgotten document—the first audio recording of warfare—which was considered for inclusion on the Golden Record. Co-organized with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA), Dario Robleto: The Signal premieres at the Carter on May 12 and will be on view through October 27, 2024, after which it will travel to Santa Barbara, where it will be on view December 1 to April 6, 2025.

Ancient Beacons Long for Notice is the third and final installment in a trilogy of video and sound installations that comprise Robleto’s years-long investigation of the scientific, philosophical, and moral tensions of recording the sanctity of human life. The film was co-commissioned by the Carter and SBMA.

Presented in the Carter’s galleries in a black-box format, the sound and video installation are accompanied by a curated selection of Robleto’s works on paper and sculptural assemblies that augment the story of the film. Varying across medium, the grouping of more than 18 works includes selections from his print portfolio The First Time, the Heart (A Portrait of Life 1854-1913) (2018), featuring images of heartbeat waveform recordings from the 19th and early 20th centuries; Unknown and Solitary Seas (Dreams and Emotions of the 19th Century) (2018), 3D-printed stainless-steel renderings of the earliest waveform recordings of blood flowing from the heart and into the brain; and Survival Does Not Lie in the Heavens (2012), digital prints that assemble stage lights taken from the album covers of live performances of now-deceased gospel, blues, and jazz musicians. Taken together, these works reflect the artist’s ongoing meditation on the recording of human existence.

“We are thrilled to present the work of Dario Robleto, one of the most celebrated Texas artists living and working today,” said Andrew J. Walker, Executive Director of the Carter. “American artists have long shared with scientists a drive to uncover the unknowns about ourselves and the world around us, and Dario’s work is exemplary of that universal passion. It also feels particularly resonant that his new film will debut alongside the Carter’s exhibition Moving Pictures: Karl Struss and the Rise of Hollywood—creating a dialogue between Robleto’s bold celestial imagery and the historic cinematographer’s imaginative aesthetics, an exhibition pairing that showcases two artists reimagining the mediums of visual storytelling, and that exemplifies the Museum’s mode of bridging the past and present.”

Based in Houston, Robleto is a multidisciplinary artist, researcher, materialist poet, and self-proclaimed citizen-scientist. Until recently, he created modern-day Wunderkammern, assembling found and manipulated objects in intricate, handcrafted displays akin to the 19th-century curiosity cabinet. In 2019, he departed from sculpture to attend to his new focus, a project comprising three films, and writing his first book, co-authored with art historian Jennifer Roberts, that grapples with the ethos of the Golden Record.

Dario Robleto (b. 1972), American Seabed (detail), 2014, fossilized prehistoric whale ear bones salvaged from the sea (1 to 10 million years), various butterflies, butterfly antennae made from stretched and pulled audiotape recordings of Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row,” concrete, ocean water, pigments, coral, brass, steel, Plexiglas, Courtesy of the artist, © Dario Robleto

With his collaborators, Bill Haddad and Skye Ashbrook, the films feature rich soundscapes, an original score, and dynamic visuals sourced from still images of historical events, NASA footage, videos of his own lab experiments, and generated animations. Drawing inspiration from the PBS documentary series Cosmos, Robleto narrates his works in an approach more traditionally associated with science broadcasts. By subverting this format, Robleto simultaneously inserts the artistic perspective into scientific discourse while positioning scientific endeavors, like the Golden Record, within the art historical canon. The first two films in the series, The Boundary of Life is Quietly Crossed (2019) and The Aorta of an Archivist (2021) trace several “firsts” in the history of recording, including heartbeats, brainwaves, and significant moments in voice and sound.

Robleto’s third film, Ancient Beacons Long for Notice, explores the backstory and philosophical debate surrounding the creation of the Golden Record by examining two understudied audio recordings—one selected for inclusion on the Record, the other omitted. Produced by American astronomer Carl Sagan, his wife-to-be-Ann Druyan, and a team of scientists, the Golden Record is, in its final form, a hopeful gesture, purposefully edited to put humanity’s “best face forward” in a first-contact scenario. The Record’s content, selected by the NASA team, includes images, a range of sounds found in nature, and audio chosen to represent humanity—including music, spoken greetings, footsteps, laughter, and a “life signs” recording submitted by Ann Druyan, Creative Director of the Voyager Interstellar Message Project. The “life signs” audio is produced by the electricity of Druyan’s brain and heart when connected to an electroencephalogram (EEG) and an electrocardiogram (EKG). Supported by interviews with Druyan, Robleto’s film focuses on this audio and what Druyan was thinking during the EEG and EKG recordings, which she created with the goal of relaying messages through her thoughts—messages of love but also of the pain we can cause one another, bringing in aspects of humanity that were left off of the Record by the larger team. Simultaneously, the film examines a rare and forgotten file that was considered for inclusion in the Record—the first audio recording of warfare—made in 1918 during the final month of WWI. Notably, the Record contains no visible trace of war, injustice, famine, or environmental decay, and it’s this omission that Robleto’s work asks the viewer to confront, questioning our moral obligation to present a “full accounting” of our actions when constructing the memory of humanity, and who has the right to curate that narrative.

“One of the many powerful elements of Dario’s work is its versatility and the poetics of his words and imagery—he is able to at once convey the sense of discovery, melancholy, and sublimity felt when comparing the vastness of outer space to the lifespan of human civilization,” said Margaret Adler, the Carter’s Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper. “With Voyager 1 soon to exit our solar system and, therefore, its final contact with us approaching, we are especially honored to have commissioned this beautifully relevant film that speaks to how we, as humans, tell our story.”

“Dario makes art about the painful yet beautiful paradoxes of being human, of beholding the infinity of the universe, but knowing full well we are finite and mortal. Of staring into the nighttime sky and knowing the stars will remain out of reach for us on earth,” says James Glisson, Curator of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara Museum of Art. “The opportunity to co-commission a film by Dario and to do so with the esteemed Carter is a rare opportunity. Ancient Beacons Long for Notice will no doubt find a receptive audience in the rich film culture of California.”

Dario Robleto (b. 1972), Sadness from Listening to a Sung Melody, (Le Vallon) Gounod, 1896, 2018, portfolio of 50 prints on Rising Drawing Bristol, photolithographs with transparent base ink, hand-flamed and sooted paper; image brushed with lithotine and lifted from soot, fused in a mild solution of shellac and denatured alcohol, Courtesy of the artist, © Dario Robleto

Dario Robleto: The Signal is organized by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The exhibition is co-curated by Margaret Adler, Curator of Paintings, Sculpture, and Works on Paper at the Carter, and James Glisson, Curator of Contemporary Art at SBMA. The film Ancient Beacons Long for Notice is made possible in part by VIA Art Fund. Sheila Wald & Bill Pierce, an anonymous donor, and The Museum Contemporaries supported the film commission for SBMA.