Solar-powered art installation to keep Toto's 'Africa' playing in the desert. Forever.

When the aliens finally make their covert earthly landfall, we’re hoping they touch down at the site of a new art installation somewhere in the African desert, where Toto’s "Africa" is destined to play on repeat until the end of time…and then we hope they reach out and make contact with the rest of us, so they can tell us what to think of it all. 

Max Siedentopf, a German-Namibian artist with a deep appreciation for pop culture, has contrived an always-on art installation somewhere in the Namibian desert that looks like something out of a Stanley Kubrick movie, and that sounds like — well, that sounds exactly like "Africa" by Toto, because that’s what it is.

Powered by solar panels that assure the project can live up to its 24/7 promise, the installation recognizes the popular 1982 song’s eternal rebirth. After resurging in popularity thanks to Weezer’s cover version last year, the song got even more play recently when Pitbull adapted it for the Aquaman soundtrack.

Siedentopf explains on Toto Forever’s project page that the whole idea is “to keep Toto going for all eternity,” thanks to the solar-powered six-speaker array “that’s attached to an MP3 player that only has one song on it.” While Siedentopf provides a basic map that indicates the installation’s general location, its exact whereabouts are intended to remain a secret — at least until someone with an ardent passion for staking out the weird and the strange discovers it.

SYFY WIRE has reached out to Siedentopf for comment (we’re especially interested to learn if he has similar ideas for other songs up his sleeve), and will update this article with any fresh news as we receive it. In the meantime, Toto Forever will be out there somewhere, doing its solitary thing around the clock to an invisible audience in the desolate desert wastes — and that sounds like a killer use of infinitely-renewable solar energy to us.