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Short abstract:

A presentation combining scientific storytelling and performance lecture to open up artistic and speculative approaches to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Cosmoimaginaries emphasises plural imaginaries as vital for reshaping SETI's post-detection protocols in the new space age.

Long abstract:

This presentation opens up creative and plural imaginings of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) through a combination of scientific storytelling, performance lecture incorporating the music of the Golden Record on NASA’s Voyager probes, and artistic processes from chroma.space's immersive performance "Of the Spheres”. Through an examination of art projects and futures work, including the author’s own collaborations with the scenario research of the newly founded SETI Post-Detection Hub at the University of St. Andrews, the presentation explores emerging practice-based engagements with the extraterrestrial, and what Valerie Olson names the “more-than-terran”.

In the midst of a new era of space and lunar exploration, technological and telescopic advancements significantly expand potentials for detecting extraterrestrial life. A vital re-evaluation of SETI’s post-detection protocols is in progress - emerging from calls to incorporate process-oriented and culturally diverse understandings. At Breakthrough Listen’s Making Contact meeting, the members of the Indigenous Studies Working Group - Atalay, Lempert, Shorter, and TallBear - challenged SETI researchers to overcome entrenched Euro-American biases, and highlighted that communication protocols are plural and evolve in response to relational and cultural contexts. Artistic, speculative interventions for “playing” first contact scenarios - ranging from Mixed Reality participatory experiences to Live Action Role Playing (LARP) - hold creative techniques for rising to this call to engage a plurality of imaginaries.

The work presented is developed across the first year of the "Cosmoimaginaries" programme that combines creative research and art practice at the polycultures of ecology and technology to reimagine planetary and outer space relations.