Chris Combs' Feathery "Gateway" Blinks Out the Arecibo Message — and Is Ready for Public Viewing

Electronic artist Chris Combs has built a feathered friend, flashing out the Arecibo message on a loop — and if you're planning a visit to San Pedro, you can see it in-person at the Angels Gate Cultural Center.

"'Gateway (Transmission III)' dimly blinks the 'Arecibo message,' a transmission sent towards star cluster Messier 13 from the then-new Arecibo radio telescope in 1974," Combs explains of the feathered capsule. "Though it was considered a 'message to aliens,' the Arecibo transmission was brief, less than three minutes in duration, and was sent only once. It was a demonstration of the telescope creators' technical prowess more than an earnest attempt to advertise humanity."

The message itself was transmitted as a frequency modulated signal, which could be decoded into a one-bit black-and-white image. When properly decoded and wrapped at the right point, the image resolves into representations of the decimal numbering system, atomic numbers for the elements that make up DNA along with the formulae for its chemical compounds, an estimate of the number of DNA nucleotides in the human genome, a representation of DNA's double-helix structure, a dimension-marked icon of a human, a count for the population of the Earth, a simplified graphic of the solar system, and an image of the Arecibo radio telescope itself.

Where the original message — just 210 bytes in total — was transmitted as a radio signal at 450kW of power, Combs' homage opts for visible light at a considerably lower power draw. "'Gateway' blinks its message about every eighteen hours," Combs explains. "The message itself is around 25 minutes in duration, at 1 bit/second."

This is far from Combs' first electronic art installation: earlier this year we looked at his technological recreation of Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, constructed from cabling, lights, and a network of 10 Raspberry Pi single-board computers, which sought out viewers' faces to display personal information on embedded screens — deleted after two minutes, Combs assures art fans. This very month Combs unveiled the Mirrortron, an imagining of what a smart mirror might look like if it had been made in the 1980s.

More information on Gateway is available in Combs' Mastodon thread; those who would like to see it in person are invited to the METHOD opening reception at the Angels Gate Cultural Center on September 14th, where it will be on display as part of a collaboration with Supercollider.