Welcome to the fourth episode of the Scientific Imagination x A Sign in Space series! In this special series, we explore the theory and process behind a fascinating project called “A Sign in Space.” We’ll be talking to a team of experts from different parts of the world and different fields of study.

A Sign in Space is an interdisciplinary project by media artist Daniela de Paulis, in collaboration with the SETI Institute, the European Space Agency, the Green Bank Observatory and INAF, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

The project consists in transmitting a simulated extraterrestrial message as part of a live performance, using an ESA spacecraft as celestial source. The objective of the project is to involve the world-wide Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence community, professionals from different fields and the broader public, in the reception, decoding and interpretation of the message. This process will require global cooperation, bridging a conversation around the topics of SETI, space research and society, across multiple cultures and fields of expertise.

In this episode, we focus on the the message, the discord community and communication of the message. Our special guests for this episode are Giacomo Miceli, Gonzalo José Carracedo Carballal and Claudia Mignone.

Join us as we dive into the world of scientific imagination and uncover the secrets of “A Sign in Space” with our amazing guests. For a better understanding of this episode, we recommend to listen to the first,  second and third podcast of this series first.

 

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Giacomo Miceli is an artist, entrepreneur and computer scientist. He studied CS at the Sapienza University and later specialized in AI at Stanford University. Giacomo is passionate about the intersection of technology, creativity, and the limits of the human experience. As a polyglot who lived in many countries, his love for languages and cultures has influenced his artistic endeavors. Giacomo’s career is a unique blend of artistic pursuits and startup ventures, having participated in two startup incubators and navigating the often chaotic and competitive environment of the “startup circus.” As a new media artist, his work investigates themes of journey, transformation, and meaning through visual exploration and semantic amazement. Giacomo’s latest project, “The Infinite Conversation,” has captured the attention of audiences worldwide and gained widespread recognition due to its thought-provoking concept.

Gonzalo José Carracedo Carballal is currently a Ph.D. researcher in astrophysics. While most of his work experience comes from the cyber security sector, where he used to do lots of reverse engineering and participated in several ethical hacking contests known as CTFs,  what he’d call his “highlights” in his  carreer occurred outside his working hours: He used to code in C for fun while he was still a teenager and maintained a bunch of pet projects since then. In the late 2000s, he discovered the amazing world of radio, and in the mid-2010s, he learned how to combine it with another of his passions: space and astronomy. In 2017, he built his own 3-meter radio telescope and was able to receive the Hydrogen Line signal from the Milky Way (and measure the relative speed of the arms closer to us). Some time later, he released another pet project named SigDigger which he still maintains, and used it to demodulate and decode the ExoMars’ telemetry signal during A Sign In Space.

Claudia Mignone is an astrophysicist, science writer and communicator from Italy. She has been working since October 2020 as a public engagement research technologist at the headquarters of INAF, the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics in Rome, where she is involved in a number of communication and education projects to bring astronomy closer to the Italian public. Originally from Salerno, in the South of Italy, she holds a degree in Astronomy from the University of Bologna, a PhD in Astronomy from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) and a Master’s in Science journalism and institutional communication from the University of Ferrara. After specialising in cosmology, with a thesis on the determination of the expansion history of the Universe using different types of astronomical observations, she decided to work full time in the public engagement of science and astronomy in particular, talking about the mysteries of the Universe to a variety of audiences. She worked for ten years as a science writer and communicator for the European Space Agency (ESA) in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, writing hundreds of articles and producing multimedia content to disseminate the scientific results of space missions such as Rosetta, Gaia, Planck and many others. An integral part of the award-winning team that communicated the Rosetta mission (which made history with the first comet landing in 2014), she co-wrote the cartoon series, short film and planetarium show “Once Upon a Tine” dedicated to the adventures of Rosetta and Philae. She has published research papers, both in the fields of cosmology and science outreach, and contributed to volumes on various topics in astronomy and the interaction between art and science. She co-organized the first art-science residency at ESA, in collaboration with the Ars Electronica institute in Linz, Austria (2016–2017), and has collaborated with several musicians and performing artists, both in Italy and in the Netherlands, in search of new approaches to scientific narration. She currently writes for Media Inaf, the online newspaper of the National Institute of Astrophysics, collaborates with the press office and works on a variety of projects about innovative and inclusive education of astronomy and STEM disciplines. Since 2017 she has been part of the Supernova Foundation Mentoring Programme, an international project that provides female role models and one-on-one mentoring to female physics students from all over the world