A Sign in Space: Global Collaboration as Cosmic Theatre

On 24 May 2023 a radio signal containing a simulated extraterrestrial message was transmitted towards Earth by the Trace Gas Orbiter, a Mars orbiting spacecraft of the European Space Agency. The signal was received by the Green Bank Telescope and the Allen Telescope Array in the United States and by the Medicina Radio Antenna in Italy. The event was part of the interdisciplinary project “A Sign in Space” and was streamed live by the SETI Institute, with thousands of people watching in real time. The project has been conceived and directed by media artist Daniela de Paulis, currently artist in residence at the Green Bank Telescope and at the SETI Institute. After the live event, the raw data of the signal were published in the public domain. Shortly after, an international group of citizen scientists gathered on the online platform Discord to work on the decoding process, and in just one week, they managed to extract the message from the raw data of the signal. This was an extraordinary achievement by the citizen scientist community who accomplished this feat by collaborating with each other. The data of the message extracted from the radio signal were visualised by the Discord community as an image composed by a black background and white dots. This image, named “Star Map” has been the object of hundreds of interpretations by many people who are trying to further decode the data and give them scientific and cultural meanings. The message however remains undecoded and the decoding process is ongoing. "A Sign in Space" has been reaching the international public. The project, designed as a work of cosmic theatre, has created an imaginary event to be experienced subjectively and collectively by people from various cultures and geographical locations. In "A Sign in Space", people active in the decoding process are members of a micro-society, engaged in the process of meaning making. The decoding process has been fostering a collaborative approach, over a competitive one. “A Sign in Space” stages a concrete "first-contact scenario", simulating the societal, scientific and cultural impact of the first detection of a radio signal from an extraterrestrial civilisation. “A Sign in Space” presents a socially innovative event, in which the general public plays a crucial role in decoding a potential extraterrestrial message, employing collective intelligence and skills. In the project, citizen scientists venture into a journey of scientific, cultural, artistic exploration, working independently and in groups. "A Sign in Space" asks how humans, as a multitude of societies with very diverse cultural backgrounds, give meaning to concepts, events, phenomena, using one of the possibly most radical scenarios that humankind might encounter: attempting to assign meaning to a message from an extraterrestrial civilisation. How can we possibly give meaning to something so detached from our terrestrial experience?