BIG MOUTH RADIO BEAM PROJECT

Since 30 years, an organization called SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has set up a "league" of voluntary helpers who listen to unusual radio signals from outer space. For their research they can download a programme from the SETI Website http://www.seti.org

In the late 1970s, a radio telescope called BIG EAR in Ohio, USA received a strong signal that became famous under the name WOW! (http://www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm) The origin could not be clarified until now. A lot of serious scientists are convinced that it had been sent out by another intelligence as there is no other plausible explanation. At the same time, there have been some attempts to send out information from earth into the galaxy. Some drawings and a golden plate with audio and visual material were attached to space crafts. Also, encoded data was broadcasted as a strong radio signal into space (1974 with the radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico).

The content of these data packages was created or curated by scientists - rather dry and rational. However, the most professional circle of people to represent the irrational side of our life on earth and put it in an aesthetically attractive format would be artists.
Since the BIG EAR telescope has been dismantled, the need to focus on an equivalent medium for the opposite direction became apparent. That's why I thought of founding the BIG MOUTH RADIO BEAM PROJECT (BIMRAB). It is supposed to create an intergalactic archive of sounds and pictures telling about our existence in a more complex and irrational way than the scientists did with their encoded data. In a way, this project provides artistic space pollution, hoping that a big league of artists sending out data into space will help to raise the interest of outer-space intelligence. On a metaphysical level, this project could also be seen as artistic worship. The data of the BIMRAB should be collected, curated and channelled by free form art radio stations like RESONANCE FM. I see this work as an ongoing interdisciplinary project spanning over several radio stations and maybe other media.

Resonance FM curates, produces and broadcasts a pilot programme for BIMRAB with DAI students using the results and input of the second part of the workshop, "Body Mapping".




Dutch Art Institute