Astrobiology Revealed #5: Daniela de Paulis

On the difficulties of thinking like an alien

by Aubrey Zerkle

This week we had a fascinating discussion with international media artist Daniela de Paulis, who is Artist in Residence at the SETI Institute and at the Green Bank Observatory, and the mastermind behind the experiential live performance, A Sign in Space. On May 24, Daniela and colleagues transmitted a top-secret signal to Earth. The signal, meant to simulate an alien message from outer space, was transmitted from the Trace Gas Orbiter as it circled Mars. Astronomers at the Green Bank Telescope, the SETI Allen Telescope Array, and the Medicina Radio Astronomical Station successfully intercepted the signal, and the world-wide race to decode the message began. Daniela talks about her vision for this extraordinary project and the philosophical and technical obstacles she faced in bringing it to life. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.) 

Daniela in front of the Green Bank Telescope at the Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia. 

How did you first become interested in the search for extraterrestrial life? 

That was in 2012, I attended the International Astronautical Congress in Naples. A fellow artist invited me to join one of those meetings they have with the SETI scientists, and I got immediately hooked by the field. I just found it really fascinating.

Gradually I started joining all their yearly meetings, so I became familiar with the researchers and what they do. I joined the SETI Committee in 2015, and since then have been very active. I am part of several SETI groups, including the UK SETI hub, I am Artist in Residence at the SETI institute, and still part of the SETI Committee. So, it’s really a field that I grew to know a little bit more every year.

I read that you’re a licensed radio operator. Is that something you were doing as a hobby before you got involved with SETI, or is it something you picked up along the way?

I kind of picked it up along the way. I started shifting my artistic practice from film-making to live performances with radio technology in 2009. In 2009, again I had a pivotal meeting with some radio amateurs, completely out of the blue. When I learned about what they do, I was immediately fascinated by, for example, the possibility of hearing the echo of your voice returning from the moon. So that was a bit of a eureka moment for me. I thought “We can actually touch the moon!”, so I realized that these radio waves are a physical extension of our body, of our voice, of our mind, etc.

This is when I started really becoming interested in radio technologies and the potential they could have in art. I developed a technology, an extension of the moon bounce technology [also known as Earth-Moon-Earth], basically using images instead of sound and voice. I called it “Visual Moon Bounce”, so I’m also credited by the International Amateur Radio Community for this contribution to the field. I also wanted to become more independent, instead of always relying on other people to help me. So I became a licensed radio operator in 2015, in order to really be actively involved in these works that I make.

Was that the Opticks project?

Yes, exactly. It is basically extending the moon bounce into a combination of slow scan television and Earth-Moon-Earth. This was something that in amateur radio had never been done before, so somehow my artistic contribution really helped to extend this technology to also use it in a visual way. It was one of those examples where people from a different field can really see something in a different way, a little bit like what is happening with my [A Sign in Space] project. 

As scientists we tend to think we’re being “interdisciplinary” if we’re working between scientific fields, like a biologist working with a geologist, or something like that. But you are taking it to a much broader philosophical perspective, which I think is one of the coolest aspects of A Sign in Space as well. When you were devising the message, how did you approach stepping outside an Earth-centric box and thinking like an alien?

That was, I’m not joking, the most difficult thing I’ve done as an artist. Seriously, I think I faced the greatest challenges trying to compose this message. I had some examples in mind, some novels, some science fiction books that I was especially inspired by. So I had these guidelines, and I was trying to give the [advisory] group these guidelines to work with. The first group I created with scholars from different fields, anthropologists, philosophers, etc., somehow we couldn’t find anything really meaningful, in my opinion.

At the end of almost two years of meetings, I was as confused as before. There was no actual content. Eventually, the breakthrough came from meeting a computer scientist who could literally translate the ideas I had into something that could be effectively done in computer science, and also in an interesting way. I was very lucky to meet Giacomo Miceli, who is both a computer scientist and an artist, so he had the skills to understand where I come from as an artist, the kind of philosophy and poetics I wanted to infuse into the message, and at the same time he is a very talented computer scientist. 

Immediately when I started talking to him, he started giving me some feedback, throwing some ideas at me from computer science. That is when I immediately thought, “Okay that’s it - we are on the right track!” Then there was an astronomer who packed the message in a certain way so that it was also interesting for the fields of SETI. So, in the end, it’s really been more of a collaboration, of course always with my artistic direction in mind.   

From your perspective, would you say the message is more about them, the aliens, or more about us, the humans?

With the message, I was trying to strike a balance between us and them. For me, it was also about looking at ourselves from another perspective and finding out that, actually, we don’t even know ourselves. By twisting the perspective, pretending to look at the aliens, we look back at ourselves. So, I was trying to look for content that was as neutral as possible, that could open up a lot of avenues of interpretation, also philosophical ideas, etc.

In your video introduction, you explain the message “addresses the challenging questions surrounding the possible detection of an extraterrestrial signal and alien life in the effort to prepare humans for such a profound discovery”. Could you expand a bit on what you mean by that?

For me it was really about the ultimate test to explore the limits of our communication, of our understanding. So, simulating as much as possible a realistic scenario where there is a signal coming from an extraterrestrial source, as far as Mars. Giving a very realistic, tangible scenario to people to immerse themselves in this possibility. 

I wanted to create a sort of fictional narrative that is also experiential. So instead of just watching a film, you’re actually in the film, you are an actor, you are creating the film. You can be the Jodie Foster [from Contact] who interprets the message, if you want. As an artist I find this possibility really interesting, that by experiencing something which we typically only read in science fiction, that we watch in movies, but it’s not the same as having an experience. 

I think this is bringing people a little bit closer to the question of what would happen if we ever received a signal from space. And we have not received any actual negative feedback [from the public]. Some anthropologists from the specialist group, they really prepared me for very serious backlash. It’s all based on War of the Worlds, so something which was completely different, from a hundred years ago, and a totally different historical scenario. There were no actual precedents that could really give any foreseeable account of what would happen [with the public response to this project]. They prepared me for the worst, I was prepared. 

But in fact, what I got is just a lot of very positive feedback. It almost made me feel as if the possible reception of a signal from space could even bear some signs of hope, of hope in something which is quite unspecified. I don’t know if it’s the idea that we're not alone, or hope that the universe is not as cold and empty as we think. Actually, it was a very positive, warm reaction I received from the public. 

That’s really inspiring to hear, and that leads right into my next question. As you mentioned, the public response has been nothing short of extraordinary – people from around the globe have been working together to decode the message on Discord, some are submitting sketches, and there was even a musical piece inspired by it. Is this level of response more or less than what you were expecting?

I had no expectations. I think we were so busy preparing for the launch, for the actual event, and the logistics were very challenging. So we were so busy, and I didn’t have time to think. We were all positive, we had a constructive mindset, and we went ahead with that. But we generally had no idea how many people would react. We thought there are at least two scenarios, maybe we only reach a small group of scientists and really technical people, or we reach the global population. And, fortunately, it was the second case. 

But we were really working with this idea of what should we do, should we work with the mindset of reaching the global audience or should we work with the mindset of reaching specialists? And even the message composition was somehow impacted by that, because some people in the group were saying “Oh, Daniela, you can’t create a message that is too philosophical, because otherwise people will not relate to that.” And I thought, “Actually no, I’m sure people appreciate things that have a bit of deeper meaning.”

If we think about these iconic films, like “Odyssey, 2001”, for example, they just get better with time. People understand, they appreciate that there are so many layers. And I wanted to go in that direction, regardless of how approachable it would be, because I’m pretty sure people will understand it. I don’t want to treat people like superficial or uneducated, that’s not the case. I’m pretty sure people can understand certain concepts, and I just wanted to do that, basically.

That’s wonderful, I’m sure people do appreciate that! You mentioned the logistics – your message was uploaded onto the Mars Trace Gas Orbiter, which then broadcast it back to Earth where it was received by three different observatories. What kind of technical challenges did you have to overcome to accomplish this feat?

That took about 2 years also. I was introduced by the scientists at the Italian Institute of Radioastronomy to some ESA [European Space Agency] scientists. When I started speaking to people at ESA, they suggested, “Okay, Daniela, we can use the Trace Gas Orbiter for this.” My initial plan was to use a satellite. I didn’t have such a far-reaching plan, I thought that would be unachievable. But, they actually offered to use one of their spacecraft, and when they suggested that, I thought “Wow, that would be completely beyond any hope I had initially.” 

And they made it happen. ESA dedicated a team of scientists for this project. We had biweekly meetings, and we met with the scientists at the various observatories, Allen Telescope Array, Green Bank, and Medicina. It took about one year and a half to establish a connection between the Trace Gas Orbiter and all these telescopes. We did 3 tests before the live event, so it was all extremely fine-tuned, and especially customized for these telescopes. The scientists at the various observatories had to do a lot of calibrations, and they had to work with the ESA scientists very closely. So, that was a lot of the technological part. 

Then, the message also had to be converted into a signal that we could upload on the TGO. So we had to work with Daniel Estévez, who played a very important role in this project. He coordinated all the various observatories, and he converted the message into a signal we could upload on the spacecraft. The team was very well articulated, because it was such a very analytical operation. The SETI institute has never collaborated with ESA before, or these people at ESA had never collaborated with Green Bank, they didn’t know the instruments. It was all customized for this project.

So even in the act of carrying out this project you were bringing people from different countries and different disciplines together who haven’t worked together before. That’s just really cool!

Yes, absolutely!

Your website refers to the  “Infinite timeline of the project”. Now that we’re a little more than 3 weeks into the decoding process, how do you think it’s going so far? Do you think we’ll ever get close to decoding the message?

Well, there has already been a lot of suggestions. I was looking at how the group [of people working to decode the message on Discord] moves. It’s really interesting how there is no linear thinking. It’s just going from one place to the other, and then back, and then forwards. They’re exploring all possible directions. There are now around 40 threads which are exploring 40 possible meanings of the message. There have been a group of 300 people and more around the clock working on the interpretation. Every time I check, any time of the day, there are always about 300-350 people.  

In three weeks? Well, I think they’ve made a lot of progress for sure. But it is still unclear how long it will take to complete the decoding-slash-interpretation, the two things kind of go along with each other. So, I don’t know - we’ll see!

It’s amazing there are 300 people working around the clock to decode this, it must be really fun to watch in real time.   

We didn’t expect that! The SETI institute had the brilliant idea to use Discord, this was one of their ideas. I think it’s working really well, because of the flexibility of the platform and how it allows people to collaborate with each other. It’s been way better than anything we considered before. I’m very happy with it.   

What’s next for you? Do you now sit back with popcorn and watch everything unfold, or are you already planning what’s next?

I’m always busy with the website, trying to make it more interactive. We created a few new features. For example, there is one feature which allows people to send a sound. We received a lot of drawings, we were very pleased with that feature. And now we also ask people to send in their sound and we will make a composition at the end of the project. We also check the submissions [user-submitted interpretations of the message], there is always some work every day.  

I think at the end of this project, we will be able to announce the so-called “winners”, the people who got the closest to the interpretation we gave to the message. At that point, we will have to use all the material we received to try and make a book or write papers. Just the Discord itself, looking at the threads, I think would already be very interesting for SETI scientists to go through and learn how the possible interpretation of an alien signal could be understood. I think it’s useful for everybody. It’s public, it’s open source, so everyone can draw conclusions and write material. This is why I meant “infinite”, because hopefully it will have some form of outcomes in many different ways.

That’s great! I think we can already start to see those outcomes emerge as the project unfolds. Is there anything else you’d like to discuss that I missed?

I think for me this was probably the project where I pushed the boundaries of arts and science the most. I feel like it is quite an innovative project also in the field of art, because it is about creating a form of global theater. It’s about giving people an experience they can have regardless of their location, or their financial means, or whatever.

I’m really excited to see how it all pans out!

So am I!