This article was taken from the February 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Star of Vejle is Denmark's largest free-standing steel sculpture, created by artist Kristian von Hornsleth and his team of engineers over the last four years. Its purpose: to be a DNA storage unit for 10,000 years or more. Measuring 10m3, the sculpture is one of a pair, the second of which will be filled with DNA from more than 3,000 people worldwide, before it's dropped 11 kilometres into the Mariana Trench. "I want to monumentalise our fear of dying, to give people hope. You'll know that there's a piece of you in the ocean that will be there after you're gone," he says. He hopes that the sculpture will one day be used to reconstruct and clone humans from their genes.
The giant star will carry a chest filled with blood and hair samples -- "like a tiny foetus," says von Hornsleth. The corrosion-resistant stainless-steel surface and lack of oxygen at such depths will keep the star's polish intact for millennia, so it might one day catch the light from a passing bathysphere.
Hornsleth chose to site the first sculpture in the industrial town of Vejle -- near the home of
LEGO. "Here, it avoids being drowned in a big city's visual noise," he says. Stars are planned for Dubai, São Paolo and California, also with counterparts sunk in nearby oceans.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
