ET Might Write Cartoon Contest
First Place: Caroline
Angelo
This simple drawing put together all the elements of a message hurled
from afar.
Second and Third Place: Zhen Li and Xiangpeng Jing
These cute animated GIFs illustrated the concept nicely, but
not simply. I would also have preferred
the astronomer looking in another direction.
Honorable Mentions
I also very much liked the extremely
intent E.T. , but it did not capture the distance issue
as well as the winner . The tourism cartoon was also
funny, but implied a return trip by live
people -- probably a near impossibility, though who really knows. The
dropping book cartoon
seemed too local to me. These three were all Caroline Angelo creations.
This dark and moody (but with an adorable alien) drawing by A.
Anonymous was artistically
my favorite. However, the astronomer is not on earth and the alien
is on the same planet/asteroid/moon
as the astronomer, so it doesn't quite capture the idea of flinging a message
across space.
This drawing by Miro Samwil was really nice, but had something of the
same problem as A. Anonymous' drawing -- the alien
was too close -- a notion reinforced by the paper airplane.
This drawing by Jonathan Backhaus was similar in spirit to Miro's drawing,
though
it did get the distance involved a little better, though the ETs are sending
their message
from a ship -- which negates the energy efficiency of inscribed matter channels
It's also unclear why the human is saying "Life?" when the airplane
has not hit him yet.
Typical cut-to-the-chase-with-humor Dick (who's my next door neighbor
at WINLAB and a National
Technology Medalist for his work bringing you cellular phones and
cordless phones while at AT&T).
He's a conceptual genius, but about as good an artist as I am :)
Nonetheless, an expansion on this theme
would probably make a hilarious cartoon.
