I may have been thinking too much about Life on Mars, or just not getting enough sleep, or befuddling myself looking at and trying to understand a lot of computer code as part of my job. Whatever, I had something of an insight while trying to articulate what this Carnegie International web site is trying to accomplish, why I care about it, and what it has to do with the exhibition itself, particularly before anyone has even seen any of the art.

Douglas Fogle writes about the origin of the show's title in a David Bowie song about a world spinning out of control. Bowie wrote the song in 1972--no doubt a topsy-turvy and unnerving time. If he felt the world to be spinning out of control then, I wonder what he would have thought of our world had he been able to see into the future to witness spectacles like Rwanda, 9/11, Abu Ghraib, Columbine, Katrina, or hundreds of square miles of collapsing shelf ice in Antarctica (photo at left).

More to my point, Fogle goes on to explain that Life on Mars...

"...poses a poetic question of longing, and of trying to connect. It relates not only to a literal search for extra-terrestrial life, but also to sending out signals in the dark, and hoping to get a response."

And (sit down, here comes that insight) I thought to myself, that is sort of what we hope might happen on this web site: people trying to connect, sending out signals in the dark, and hoping to get some kind of conversation going. We send our own ideas and questions out into the void and hope that someone is listening and understanding and thinking and responding. We invite people to send their own signals into the dark by signing up and posting on the Soundings blog. And because just having a website is not enough of a web presence these days, we are also setting up outposts at some of the busiest crossroads on the internet (YouTube, flickr, del.icio.us, facebook) hoping that someone who cares about what we do will intercept our signal and bounce it to others of like mind.

Though technology is my job, it would be easy for me to slip into techno-pessimism, ruminating about the alienation of people sitting at computer terminals or glued to their iPods' earbuds or spending hours a day playing computer games. But then I remember that with this same technology we sent robots to wander around the surface of the planet Mars and send us signals from outer space with stupefying color pictures of an alien world. And that we were able to watch from orbit as that ice shelf collapsed. And then I learn that even some of the artists in Life on Mars are using Second Life and Google Earth as their medium. So I will remain hopeful that our signals in the dark are reaching you, and that you will be moved to seek your own connections with us and with others like you, and that you might even visit us in the flesh sometime after May 3.