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WITH DANIELA DE PAULIS
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
JOIN THE DISCORD CHANNEL AND DOWNLOAD THE MESSAGE HERE
Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
JOIN THE DISCORD CHANNEL AND DOWNLOAD THE MESSAGE HERE
Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Daniela de Paulis is an interdisciplinary media artist.
WITH DANIELA DE PAULIS
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
JOIN THE DISCORD CHANNEL AND DOWNLOAD THE MESSAGE HERE
Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
JOIN THE DISCORD CHANNEL AND DOWNLOAD THE MESSAGE HERE
Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Daniela de Paulis is an interdisciplinary media artist.
WITH DANIELA DE PAULIS
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
JOIN THE DISCORD CHANNEL AND DOWNLOAD THE MESSAGE HERE
Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
JOIN THE DISCORD CHANNEL AND DOWNLOAD THE MESSAGE HERE
Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Daniela de Paulis is an interdisciplinary media artist.
WITH DANIELA DE PAULIS
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
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Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Original Interview transcript from the AETHER journal, followed by an update since the code has been deciphered.
JF: How did the idea for A Sign From Space emerge from your residency at SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence)?
DP: Well, it’s a long story. Like all my projects, it usually takes years. So this started very serendipitously in 2019. I was in Italy visiting a friend and he was starting a satellite company. And he said, “Daniela, why don’t you think about a project that we could launch on one of our satellites?” I thought about it and said, “Well, we are both interested in SETI. So why don’t we simulate an extraterrestrial message transmitted towards Earth? Then have people try to decode it as a sort of experiential performance.
He really liked this idea, but somehow the company was very delayed as it was during the pandemic. So I went to INAF (Istituto Italiano di Astrofisica) and later to the SETI Institute and spoke to a few of the scientists, and almost everyone loved the idea. Apparently it was something that had been proposed by SETI scientists in a different way. Somehow the idea of simulating first contact was already in some SETI research papers.
So everyone joined immediately. I started with the Italian collaborators and the INAF radio telescopes, then we had a test with the satellite company in Italy. And then the Italian radio astronomers put me in touch with ESA, who agreed to use one of their spacecraft. And so it grew quite organically by bringing together people I’ve known or met over the years. I’ve been doing this work with radio telescopes for 15 years now. So I already knew people who were familiar with my work and we publish papers together as a community of researchers.
SETI has this wonderful artist in residency programme, which was perfect for supporting my project. I also received a research fellowship in astrobiology at the Green Bank Observatory to work on the project. Somehow everything fell together, to bring this group of people together and use these facilities because everyone wanted to test this scenario. So it was very timely, and I think that’s what made it possible.
JF: What was your creative vision for the message and what criteria did you use in the collaborative process?
DP: The message was the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. It took two years. I started working with a team of 10 people, specialists from several SETI fields – anthropology, philosophy, art, all kinds of fields. And we worked together for more than a year, but I wasn’t satisfied with what we created. Then I created another group of six people and that was not conclusive either. Eventually, I ended up working with three people, and finally we managed to create a message that was, in my opinion, interesting enough from both the artistic and the SETI research fields.
I had pretty much an idea – a really strong idea from the very start, actually. I had two ideas I wanted to converge. I’m a keen reader of science fiction, so some of these ideas were inspired by science fiction books. I knew pretty much where I wanted to go, but the specialists had an academic approach that didn’t really match my poetic idea. Then in the follow-up group, we explored a lot of possibilities, which was actually good because I think by exploring these – some of which I haven’t used yet – it was a way to carve out this message by exclusion.
Every idea was really discussed very thoroughly, keeping in mind the anthropocentric problem and the questions were the main questions that recur in SETI research, such as what is intelligence or what if another civilisation might not have the same sensory capabilities, or might have completely different ways of thinking or looking at things. For example, trying to imagine what other ways of thinking could be, by also looking at other species.
JF: The message is available via Discord for people to attempt to decode. What sort of results have you received and when will the answer be revealed?
DP: I cannot reveal anything about the message, but I can say that the number of people in the Discord community is around 300 individuals active at any given time of the day, with almost 5000 people registered. Not all of them are active, but they’re all online pretty much around the clock. It’s a community that is somehow active and reading the comments or the conversation.
And then there is a group of active decoders who are mathematicians or software developers or radio specialists or artists who have been able to extract the message from the raw signal. They are now further decoding the content. At some point, there will be a need for everyone to express their interpretation of the message. There will be a limit to the decoding process, when the technical part will not be sufficient. It will be a more interdisciplinary process of meaning-making: you create the words, you know what the words mean, but then you need the intellectual creativity and individual interpretation to reveal the true meaning, but we haven’t got to that point yet.
We are still involved in the decoding process – the second stage of the decoding process. At that point, even the technically-minded people will have to engage in a different way with the message. You see that there? That’s an interpretation of it rather than it being one definitive answer. At the moment, they’re revealing the canvas, they’re revealing the content of the message, however the decoding requires at the same time an interpretation: you cannot decode it without interpreting it. The content is very specific and poetic and artistic at the same time. And that would require some creativity – a philosophical approach if you like. From different people, different cultures, there might be different interpretations.
JF: Have you, or people in the Discord channel, tried to see if AI can decode the message?
DD: We did test it, but fortunately it didn’t work. Some people are of course using AI to decode it, but it’s not capable of decoding the message.I think AI is very useful for SETI research to identify if a signal is from a non-natural origin. I’ve just heard the talk about this a few days ago, that they receive hundreds of thousands of signals, and 99% of these signals are scanned by AI softwares, so only maybe 0 or 1% of these signals escape. But in the end, they still have to be assessed by humans.
There is a citizen science platform where people can catalogue these anomalous signals and help SETI scientists have a better look at it and see if there is anything really strange, or if pretty much everything fits into categories that are already known to them. That is extremely effective. But to decode and interpret the rest of the message, I don't know how effective AI might be. We don't have a test case, so time will tell. We’ll see. But it's such an exciting possibility.
JF: What was the debate around the language to use?
DP: I’m very active in contemporary SETI research, so I participate in all the conferences to try to get myself up to date with what’s going on. Also, I had a long conversation with Doug Vakoch who is another specialist. I think he’s the only person in the world having a job of creating interstellar messages. Language is a very human term. Communication is very human. But they might not have any of that. They might not even need language. Who knows? I mean, they might not need communication. We just don’t know. If they do, this would be something they have in common with us and that would allow us to communicate with them. I think we will need something in common to establish a contact, because otherwise, I don't know if it can really be a contact, or let alone communication, if we don’t both understand it the same way.
Even with interspecies communication, that seems to be part of how life evolved on Earth. It’s part of the whole dynamic of life. Species depend on each other. So perhaps more than just communicating, they learned how to live together or to somehow use each other. I don’t know if that’s necessarily communication, but it depends how you look at it.
For the message composition process, we discussed specific criteria around communication principles. I worked with some people who joined the message composition group from fields that are not study-related, so we had to go through these basics again without making assumptions. Many people are just not aware of these questions, such as maybe other beings don’t have eyes, or maybe they don’t know mathematics or similar things. There was even someone who suggested writing a text in Latin. So, although these are really smart and creative people, some were just unaware of the debate. Somehow we are so embedded in our Western culture that it’s really difficult for some to think outside the box. Although we haven’t got rid of anthropocentrism, at least we really assessed all ideas very, very thoroughly. So it was a very intellectually honest process, a challenging process.
JF: SETI chief astronomer Seth Shostak suggested sending the internet.
DP: If we send them the whole Internet, they might figure out how complex our cultures and societies are. However we might not want to reveal too much about ourselves during our first contact.
JF: The current framework of intelligence and consciousness is limited and anthropocentric, what sort of ‘intelligence’ would you expect to find and what motivations do you think they might have for contact?
DP: In my opinion, what we are looking for is a civilisation that is very similar to ours – so, a civilisation that has radio, that understands mathematics. We won’t be able to find anything different because we have no understanding of what could be something completely different from us.
And also I think because what science is focusing on, no matter how much we speculate, it is still very human-centric. Sometimes I suggest this provocative scenario in which we have to narrow down our search and look just for something like us. What we are trying to do is already very challenging, but at least we would know better what we are looking for and will have probably more chances of success if we specifically look for a civilisation that is as similar as possible to ours. If they use radio, it is a very good sign that they have at least one thing in common with us, and all the patterns of thinking that allowed us both to discover the radio. And then we can take it from there. So instead of looking for some other being who is just beyond our brain potential, something our brains can’t grasp, we look for us. I think that no matter how much we stretch our brain, we can imagine all kinds of scenarios. Even the wildest scenarios. There are some pretty wild scenarios imagined by SETI scientists, but still, I think it is very speculative.
If you were to look for somebody to communicate with on Earth, you wouldn’t look for a cockroach, you would look for another human. So it’s the same with another civilisation. We could just simply look for some other humanoids, which would be already challenging enough. Even if that's not the intended goal, it seems like there is a limitation with that anyway. Again, it’s that human-centric viewpoint. How we could communicate with anything that’s going to be as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than us, but still within the confines of us.If there is a species out there, which is really different from us, then I think we will just be communicating in a completely different way, like dolphins and humans.
Intelligence is also a very tricky question. Also, are they individuals? Are they collective or what we humans think of as individuals? In fact, the most long-lasting species usually are species that function as a collective. It is a very, very useful, very interesting exercise, but I don't know how much it will ultimately play an important role in SETI research.
JF: Do you believe radio is the answer or might other methods of seeking be more appropriate?
DP: I think combining various approaches will be more successful – like, for example, using these telescopes that are looking at the atmospheres of planets, looking for life patterns. So these can give us more precise signs of where we might be finding intelligent life. Searching for radio or laser signals only is making this search even more difficult, but then how else would you do it? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think for now, that's what we have, that’s what we know. And that’s why I think that if we found something, some techno signatures of this kind would indeed be a civilisation that has something in common with us.
I think if we find some form of life that is biologically similar to ours, that would be incredible. If we found a planet with an atmosphere showing that there are seasons or changes in the biosphere, for example, that would be incredible. I think I’m really looking forward to that time, which I think will happen relatively soon. Maybe SETI will change completely at that point, I don’t know. We will still point the radio telescopes to planets to see if they are emitting any radio signals, but maybe in the future there will be other ways – maybe by looking at the atmosphere, scientists might imagine what life could be there.
JF: What do you make of the recent discovery that radio blasts have been pulsing towards Earth every 21 minutes for the last 35 years?
DP: It will be interesting to see what SETI makes of it, whether it is an alien signal or a natural object in the cosmos, it seems very promising as it shows we don't know much about what is out there. I would hope that it is a strong candidate for an ET message!
JF: In light of the recent congressional hearings, whistleblower accounts and leaked dossiers suggesting contact, what form would you expect a UFO to take?
DP: There was a plan that scientists were presenting a few years ago to send some probes around Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away. So the plan was to send these mini-spacecraft that are like stamps. They are so small they can move just by laser. So by having a laser that pushes them towards space, they will travel at the speed of light. They will be very lightweight and could reach Alpha Centauri in a few years. They can do a flyby equipped with a camera that could take photos of the surface of these exoplanets from close by. And that would be the very first rudimental human interstellar spacecraft that could orbit another exoplanet. So who knows, maybe they already have something like that that is taking photos of Earth?
There is a cigar-shaped object out there called Oumuamua, that some astronomers think could be an extraterrestrial spacecraft – well, it could be. It’s quite far-fetched, but why not? I’m not sure if it’s been classified as an asteroid. It's an object, a rock that looks like a cigar, and because of its shape, that is very unusual. Astronomers don't know exactly what it is because they think that that type of shape is not something naturally created by explosions or star formation phenomena or anything like that. So, because it has this very weird shape they think it has an interesting history.
Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb, wrote a paper about the possibility of this object being a spacecraft, an alien spacecraft. I mean, why not? It could well be. If we want to send some stamps to orbit a planet, why wouldn’t another civilisation also create some kind of aerodynamic object that would have a look at what we are doing from close by? It’s certainly possible that if we do it, other civilisations might do it.
JF: What has the simulation revealed to you about human nature and our cultural obsession with contact?
DP: If we ever received a signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation, it would be really significant, but if the signal has content, then that is something else. In our society, scientists are looking for a signal. Simply having a signal which is not from a star or another natural phenomena will be incredible in itself. Content - a message - would absolutely create a global cognitive shift.
What I discovered with this project is that this hope for a signal is so very widespread. We had an incredible outcome with this project – not just the usual suspects or technical people reacting, or the usual scientists or small communities of people who are interested in this. Instead we had a really global reaction and it made headlines all over the world, because it is really resonating with so many people.
I think this hope for communication or contact with another species or extraterrestrial species is so incredibly rooted in all cultures. I find it quite amazing and wonderful that we all long for something to be out there. It is not necessarily religious, but why do we all hope for that? That’s a question I'm asking myself at the moment. What do we expect? Is it hope? Maybe for some. It comes with a lot of positive feelings.
JF: Was there ever a conversation about actually sending the message rather than just a simulation?
DP: This is something I was warned about at the beginning of this project, especially by some specialists who were trying to discourage me from doing this project because they fear there could be an overreaction, like for example with the War of the Worlds broadcast. Or sometimes, you read some science fiction scenarios where people panic, so they perhaps based their ideas on these panic scenarios and were really, really concerned that there would be conspiracy theories and some people really overreacting. Who knows if people would not think it was a simulation? That was the first question. So the question was, are we going to announce it as a simulation or as an actual reception?
And then we considered announcing that actually it was just an art project. I didn't opt for the second option as this wouldn't have been as meaningful as in 1938 when Orson Wells staged the War of the Worlds. It was a completely different time then, but in 2023, after we went through the pandemic and all the fake news, false media stuff, you just don't want to create more fake news, so that wasn’t the right time historically to create a deceiving scenario like that.
Instead, I decided to be very clear with the story of a simulation, which by the way had a really great impact because people knew it was a simulation. That really highlighted the actual imaginative power of the project. So it turned into a sort of theatrical event. I created this fictional event that reached people from around the world, and they all somehow imagined this scenario for a bit, so it was just like making a film, a science fiction film, without actually making a film, but just creating this imaginative scenario in people’s minds. I’m pleased we went in that direction, that we didn’t create this fake story that would’ve come with a backlash, not necessarily because of the panic situation, but because of people feeling really taken advantage of.
I prefer to treat the public as an intelligent community. Sometimes I hear some researchers refer to the public as a group of people with low education, and I think that’s not the case and not how we should be thinking. The public responded in a very beautiful way, actually. Just sending lots of very positive messages. Some people contacted me saying that they saw aliens, but that is also part of the poetry.
Also, in the community on Discord, we hardly had to do any moderation. It just turned out to be this incredibly collaborative and positive stage. So this really changed my perspective on what to expect if we ever receive an extraterrestrial radio signal. I think there will be mostly positive reactions to it.
JF: Are you going to simulate sending a message back and if so, what would it be?
DD: You mean, if you’ve received the message and then it’s now like, what are we going to send back to them? Oh, I see – because we’ve done it from the ET side, what would we say? No, I haven’t thought about that because I wasn’t terribly interested about what we would send as humans, but that could be a really interesting follow-up part, actually.
I think when people see what the message is, there will be some kinds of ethical questions that might arise. There might be some more thinking around this message for a bit after the coding is fully completed; potentially, this could go on for some time, but it would be really interesting to create an open call for a response.
Perhaps just send the message to Mars or where the message was sent from, and see what people would reply to this message that we created. That would be a really fun exercise. Maybe we can send it – as long as it’s not music, because I’m not terribly keen on the idea of sending music. We should move on a bit beyond that idea, I think. There’s a lot of music being pumped out, so they have the music.
JF. What about sound, rather than music as an interpretation, just the raw files of ambient sounds from the planet, from nature, or recordings of plants and animals using ultrasonic sensors.
DP: Yes, even though they’re all still human technological interpretations, it’s a less-anthropocentric viewpoint than, say, music. We think that that’s what’s made us special as humans because we can create music and art, but to really understand what the Earth is like, I think listening to nature would be more interesting.
With the other researchers, it was a completely different understanding of the meaning of this message among the three of us. To me, the final solution brought together this idea I had at the beginning. So for me it was really kind of great to see this accomplished at last, this idea finally having a forum, and for them, it was something totally different.
As artists, I guess sometimes it’s good not to overthink. I’m coming from a more sort of intuitive or poetic place, but I'll take this seriously because we could definitely transmit something like that into space, although I know there is a lot of resistance towards transmission. So we will have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten anyone. I think you do this by being very careful not to have an aim, not to be tracking any particular planet, so that the radio waves just spread across the sky and you’re not detectable.
JF: Are we not already beaming radio frequencies out there without a necessarily specific message? Take HAARP in Alaska as an example.
DP: Yes, absolutely. I think we’ve done that for maybe more than 70 years because we now have technologies that are powerful enough to make it into interstellar space. So if an extraterrestrial civilisation similar to ours was pointing their radio antennas or other forms of optical telescopes towards us, they will see that the Earth has a very specific pattern of life – that there is some life signature that shows very clearly from the atmosphere, from the cycle of heat and cold, also radio waves. We emit all kinds of radio waves. Electrical lighting also is a signature. So we are very detectable.
If they were looking for us using the same instruments we are using to find other civilisations, it seems very likely that they will see us, according to SETI scientists. In some ways it does feel like we are just sort of randomly emitting things anyway. We may as well send a coherent message to cut through all of the noise.
I think just by existing, we would already send a message. It seems like revealing our presence is really unavoidable. Even if we had a completely radio-quiet planet, I think they would see what’s going on. Maybe they already have. I don't know. Or probably it’s years away. Maybe there’s already a message on its way.
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Image: Decoded Message by Daniela de Paulis, Giacomo Miceli and Roy Smits → @asigninspace → asignin.space/decode-the-message
JF - Could you describe the message and what it means to you?
DP - The message composition has been one of the most challenging aspects of A Sign in Space, it took me two years to finalise the process, working alongside several people from various disciplines. After having consulted philosophers, poets, space lawyers, astronomers and anthropologists, I presented some of the concepts I wanted to infuse in the message to computer scientist Giacomo Miceli, astronomer Roy Smits and astrobiologist Kirt Robinson, and together we composed the message that was eventually transmitted by the Trace gas Orbiter towards Earth. The message conveys the poetic and philosophical contents I was striving for since the start of the project. I was very fortunate to work with specialists who could understand the poetic and philosophical requirements of the work, and translate it into a technical and scientific language that could add interesting layers to the fabric of the message. I also wanted the message to be challenging enough, to sustain the decoding and interpretation process over a relatively long period of time. As a result, the decoding process has provided - and it is still providing - hundreds of interpretations. I cannot reveal the meanings I wanted to convey with the message yet, but I can say that for me it is more important to learn about the meanings that other people are attributing to it. Finally, after just over a year, the message has been decoded, however this "solution" keeps opening more questions. As humans, would we ever settle on a definitive meaning over a potential extraterrestrial message or over any human or non-human concept?
JF - How would you imagine it being received and interpreted in space, and what kind of response might you expect in return?
DP - One of the concepts I wanted to challenge with the message is the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial life. METI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been designing messages aimed at communicating with a potential extraterrestrial civilization, also the Arecibo message and other interstellar messages are built upon this possibility. However, what if the message had another purpose and maybe humankind was not the intended recipient? What if the message was akin to life itself? Would that imply a reply or a confirmation of receipt?
JF - What were some of the more intriguing guesses people made on the Discord channel?
DP - Amongst the hundreds of very interesting interpretations, what really caught my attention is how each participant in the decoding process has been following a very personal narrative or trajectory, it is fascinating to see how differently each person started investigating and structuring the possible meaning of the message. Besides the subjective interpretations, it is possible to weave a mind-map of the decoding process. In fact, a citizen scientist is doing just that. Some of the interpretations I favoured are by someone who started sonifying the data of the message and as a result of this, he started composing music. Another interpretation I found very poetic is by a citizen scientist Mauro Pierluigi, who imagined that the message could be a Braille map. I showed his interpretation as part of an exhibition at Villa Galileo in Arcetri last May. This was the last residence of the great Italian astronomer who spent his final years there, while blind. Visitors at the exhibition could touch the Braille map, close their eyes and imagine sensing the cosmos through the sparse dots of the message. Mauro and his family came to see the exhibition. His daughter drifting her fingers across the map made me think of how young we are in relation to the cosmos and that, like curious children, we are trying to make sense of it, moving in darkness and with little information available.
JF - Do you have plans for future messages, or to simulate a reply?
DP - I don't have plans for future messages or a reply. I am planning however to make a book with the various interpretations of the message. If I had the opportunity to repeat the project and send another message from Mars to the Earth, I would probably send an empty signal: by observing the decoding process unfolding in A Sign in Space, I learnt that simply receiving a signal from another civilization would be a powerful enough event to generate all kinds of reactions and interpretations.
Daniela de Paulis is an interdisciplinary media artist.