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Matt Cole – Terra Two

On November 16th, 1974, humanity sent a radio message into space in an attempt to contact extra-terrestrials.

Named after the Observatory in Puerto Rico from which the message was broadcast, the Arecibo signal contained a simple, pictorial message composed of 1,679 bits of data. Included in the message were details of human DNA, a representation of a person, and crucially, a graphic of the solar system indicating from which planet the message had come.

Many years later, an unsuspecting resident of planet Earth is about to receive the aliens’ reply.

My submission for Terra Two attempts to construct a narrative through ambient sound. While I have my own opinion about the fate of the protagonist, the exact details of this narrative have been left intentionally vague so as to allow the user significant scope to imagine their own version of events. The sound design has been visualized as a spectrogram to reveal the alien signal. It is presumed that the protagonist of this narrative is unaware of the alien communication – considering that they are hearing no more than an irritating, background noise. Certain sounds give an indication as to location, the moment in time, and activity but ultimately, the signification of these sounds is open to personal interpretation. Speculation is encouraged and never wrong.

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