When Art, Space and Dreams Meet… and When Reflection Becomes Necessary

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Is it ultimately possible to escape the air of one’s time… and what would escaping it mean, when the air of the times carries its own scent… and harbours the very seeds of its becoming…

…If I were asked to name the Work [of Art] which in recent years has been the most pregnant, the most “effective”, the most received by our contemporaries, the one that will have left the strongest lasting (even irreversible) trace, the one after which nothing will ever be the same again, the one that — without daring to hope for it — we had long been waiting for, the one that was unprecedented and was to make its way insidiously into minds and nourish them… well, I could first affirm that this Work exists, but I could also say that it is not the doing of an artist as such, that you have necessarily encountered it… and that you have let yourselves be steeped in it!

What is more, I could say of this work — however commonplace it may be made — that it will always retain its tremendous power of revelation for whoever encounters it for the first time, and that it will go on fundamentally initiating the eye.

Not, then, the fruit of a painter, any more than of a poet, a jester or a musician, it is in fact the result of several generations of men, of researchers, of engineers, the culmination of a collective effort, combining Knowledge as much as Know-How, an effort of which, in the end, we could only be proud.

So, you will ask me, this Work — what can it be, that can bear all these superlatives and… that, what is more, has changed our way of seeing for ever, you say? and… that would instantly contain a “totality” of situations…? What, you haven’t found it? really? not found it yet… that moment in the history of Humanity… that first time when Man discovered his domain with his own eyes… that blue pearl suspended in space, that oasis where water abounded, where temperatures were mild, where clouds coiled in immense spirals… You did not see it, nor linger over it that day? You have not, you would not have dreamed while contemplating it, this Work, this first photograph of the Earth that you encountered… did it not move you, then?… and the day when

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Chernobyl spat out its venomous spittle, did you not — you who now had the revelation of it — feel “an ache in the Planet”, in your Planet, a threatened cradle, a little oasis garden of life a stone’s throw from its mother star, the Sun? But think again: that day, the day of your first encounter with this first photograph of the Earth, did you not definitively and unconsciously relegate to the past the… globe and its conceptual representation, impalpable, immaterial, flavourless and outdated, in favour of a “new intelligence” of your Planet, insofar as the new photographs that have since been offered to us have made us “smell” it, “taste” it, “touch” it with our eyes — in short, have made us love it henceforth at its true worth!…

… If I were now asked to identify the most beautiful of the poems I have ever been privileged to witness, I would answer, without the slightest hesitation, that it was the spectacle which, in real time, I was indeed given to experience — to within a light-second — I mean that night when Man set foot on that heavenly body, the Moon, which until that 6 July 1969 only a few illuminated madmen had tried to catch in their landing nets among the reflections of the calmest and most limpid waters.

… And if I were further asked to bear witness and to tell of those moments when emotion takes your breath away, I would seek out that night in August when, against the backdrop of the firmament, a satellite in low orbit made its appearance, that night when, quite evidently, the new limits of our responsibilities asserted themselves, as did the new places of Exigency… but of that night I shall speak in a moment.

Of course, the artist that I am could not fail to take account of his encounters with emotion, nor could he fail to give an account of them, after his sensibility (?), his prescience (?), his intuition (?) had absorbed it in order to translate it into some artistic concept without precedent, though born of and carried by that famous… air of the times…

Thus, on several occasions, artistic concepts have appeared in my head, quite naturally, like those inscriptions that show up on liquid crystals, and it is two of these concepts that I would now like to bear witness to.

THE “CELESTIAL WHEEL”… ONE OF THE VERY FIRST SPACE ART CONCEPTS

“…Imagine a crown of stars around a planet like a great celebration, like an excess that is nonetheless on the scale of the beings carried by that planet. Close your eyes, imagine… Imagine further… a crown of stars like an adornment around a planet…

And now, open your eyes: what if the Earth were that planet, what if that crown of stars were the Celestial Wheel, and what if the excess of this Celestial Wheel signified the idea of a new Exigency and of Difference, as the dawn of the third millennium rises over humanity?…”

Chronologically, the concept of the Celestial Wheel was born of an emotional shock and, subsequently, of the opportunity offered by the technological progress developed in the course of the conquest of space, progress that I would attempt to make my own in order to turn it into new “tools” of creation with an artistic purpose.

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The emotional shock, for its part, now goes back some fifteen years, to a moonless night when — a waking dreamer lying on my back, a back firmly “wedged” against the Earth — my eyes were caressing the constellations of the sky, and my consciousness was spreading out into the eternity of Space. It was at that time in August when the night sky is a celebration dressed in a thousand and one shooting stars.

In that moment of intoxication, I was floating wholly among the stars and eternity when, at the edge of my field of vision, in the immutability and immensity of a boundless silence, still lit by a sun that had nonetheless set long before, and twinkling like a star of the first magnitude, an Artificial Satellite in low orbit made its appearance, setting out to cross the celestial vault diagonally until — still in that unheard-of silence — a few moments later, it disappeared, swallowed by the cone of the Earth’s shadow.

That evening, the Poem was the entire Universe and the “I” of the poem was that artificial star: here was Man now inscribing his trace upon the background noise of the firmament, and here he was — this man — having conquered the infinitely small, setting out to push open with his frail little arms the gates of the infinitely large.

At that very instant, I knew that Science had become Subject within Discourse. A Science and a Discourse at the mercy of Man, in his hands, resonating with his genetic capacities, and through which his true measure would be revealed to him, as would the history of his destiny. And that night, I found myself hoping for a day when man would inscribe no longer the trace but the sign of his ambition, a sign like a reminder that would reflect back to him the exigency of this quest, a sign like a lighthouse, like a totem at once catalyst and witness.

And it was thanks to the development of space technologies (pushed to their very limits) that this sign, a mental icon of a new kind, crystallised in its concept and in its form.

In fact, the Celestial Wheel rests essentially on the notion of geostationary satellites, in connection with their specific orbit. These satellites, now in common use mainly in the fields of telecommunications and meteorology, share precise characteristics. In particular, they are all positioned on one and the same great circle lying in the plane of the Earth’s equator, a great circle whose radius is equal to 7 times the radius of the Earth. Moreover, once “placed” in their orbit (this famous great circle), geostationary satellites have the property of always remaining directly above the same point on the Earth. Which, in more scientific terms, means that they move with an angular velocity strictly equal to that of the Earth. In concrete terms, this means that if a geostationary satellite were visible from the ground, and if, looking at it from your garden, it were “there” in the sky, you could, at any moment of the day or night, go out and check that it was indeed still “there”, in exactly the same spot in the sky.

Well over a hundred of these satellites have already been injected into this great circle, and one can easily imagine that they form a kind of immense “necklace” encircling the Earth like a gigantic ring of Saturn.

In view of the above, the idea was therefore to graft onto the next satellites of this type a technical device that could be remote-controlled from the ground and that would emit, on demand, a light signal which, seen from the surface of the Earth, would have

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a brightness — or magnitude — equal to or greater than that of Venus when its brilliance is at its maximum.

Once thirty to forty of these satellites had been so equipped, they could then be switched on at the Earth’s command, and they would draw in the sky a gigantic… Celestial Wheel.

… ITS CONFIGURATIONS…

This system (the set of geostationary satellites so equipped) would lend itself to diverse lighting configurations. One could, for example, once a consensus had decided upon it, “switch on” all the satellites so equipped at midnight Universal Time, then at 08:00 UT and at 16:00 UT, for 5 seconds: quite apart from the Sign it would inscribe in the sky, the Celestial Wheel would serve as a time signal on the scale of the planet, materialising the plane of the Earth’s equator, which lies within a few degrees of the plane of our galaxy. One will also note that, depending on the point of observation, its inclination relative to the horizon would differ from one place to another: seen from the equator, it would be perfectly vertical, and as one “climbed” towards one of the poles, it would tilt more and more, until it was perceived as horizontal once one of the poles had been reached.

On the occasion of certain major world events (the Olympic Games, World Fairs, a Disarmament Summit), other kinds of lighting configurations could be adopted, by — for example — making the light signal run from one satellite to the next in different rhythms, by making them twinkle one by one, two by two… every 3 or 6 hours, for as long as these events lasted. And, by a kind of code, these forms of light programming of the Celestial Wheel would convey that somewhere on Earth, at that very moment, Celebration or reflection was taking place.

On Christmas night, all the satellites could shine as a “celestial garland”, a garland also lit up for Chinese New Year, for Jewish New Year…

And then, if mankind were struck by madness, if a nuclear conflict broke out, the Celestial Wheel would come to pulsate, sending out calls in Morse code in the form of luminous S.O.S. signals.

In yet another kind of configuration, the Celestial Wheel would also make it possible to fulfil an old dream, namely to visualise the speed of light. As we know, light travels at 300,000 km per second. Now, the circumference of the Celestial Wheel measures a little over 280,000 km. If, then, light were made to “run” from one satellite to the next, it would be seen passing across the sky again some 9/10 of a second later! (the time it would take to travel the said circumference). But, of course, in terms of its symbolism, I would wish the “inauguration” of the Celestial Wheel, that is to say its first lighting, to take place precisely on 1^st January of the year 2000.

… LIGHTHOUSE AND SYMBOL…

A beacon in space, a sign without reference, the Celestial Wheel was conceived and appeared to me

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as a tangible symbol and as a lighthouse revealing our own new dimension as human beings at the dawn of the third millennium: the dimension of our capacity for Know-How, of our capacity to ask ourselves new questions, as well as to have to manage a survival “raft” in space, a certain blue pearl in the cosmos, a planet named Earth, our nourishing mother. Its twinkling configurations express celebration and the hope of something else.

At the crossroads of Art, Banking and Industry, the Celestial Wheel gives concrete form to and illustrates the advent of the change of civilisation now heralding itself. Its premises no longer belong to the classical artistic approach, and its realisation involves the entire community.

Its financing — the solution might lie in a contribution from all the governments that chose to take part, in proportion to the gross national product of each — will be the proof that a cultural will has succeeded in altering the traditional nature of investment, an investment that would no longer fall within the framework or the perspective of the industrial model alone, but would apply — also — to the things of the mind.

A signal open to multiple decodings, invested with meaning and received according to the subjectivity and culture of each person, the Celestial Wheel could be one of those artefacts — like the other Great Human Achievements (the Great Pyramid, for example) — accomplished enough to convey by themselves the feeling of their own desire.

Charged with a poetic force without equivalent, it expresses for me the change of scale and of will in the History of Humankind.

… THE STRENGTH OF THE CONCEPT: ITS ADVENTURE…

Today this concept is almost ten years old and, in ten years, what has become of it, and could I have foreseen it? Over these ten years, technical studies have naturally been pursued with several international organisations, making it possible to verify aspects of its feasibility and its difficulties. (Five years ago, feasibility was conceivable only by using military know-how, and civilian feasibility still “lagged behind” by a factor of ten to the power of minus two as regards the energy required on board each satellite. But two years ago this factor shrank to ten to the power of minus one, and one can, without being particularly optimistic, envisage that within the next two or three years the required power will be technically available. (Which leaves as realistic a target date for the first lighting of 1^st January of the year 2000).

But, beyond these technical studies, this artistic concept was to lead me on a quite particular journey, one that I could in no way have envisaged at the outset. Indeed, from the 1980s onwards (the date of the first article to mention it), I gradually came to accept invitations to most of the conferences at which I was asked to present the said concept. The first of these conferences took place in Venice in June 1980. It was followed by more than fifteen others, in particular in Tokyo (Second Renaissance Congress, April 1983), then in Athens (European Conference of Philosophy, June 1985), where I had the opportunity to explain it in public.

It was in this way that, little by little, I had to face the facts and hear spoken aloud what I had tried to stifle deep within myself; already in Tokyo, after my

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presentation, the then Minister of MITI, won over by the audacity of the project, could not help telling me that “his sky was his sky, and that he did not quite see by what right I was coming into it”; in Athens, various philosophers from different backgrounds made the same remark to me. So I decided, in these various places, to take advantage of the calibre of the speakers and to bring some of them together in order to reflect on the ethical conditions that must precede the launch of any Space Art concept, inasmuch as any such concept would indeed confront the gaze of five billion Earthlings whose opinion would in no way have been sought. On two occasions, the elderly Jorg Luiz Borges shared his reflections with me.

… THE ETHICS COMMITTEE

The adventure was then to gather pace, in that Professor R. Daudel, President of the Académie Européenne, was receptive to this new set of issues linked to the use of new technologies originally intended for space, and to their “diversion” for artistic ends. It was thus with his support that on 3 November 1986, on the occasion of UNESCO’s fortieth anniversary, before several dozen experts from all over the world, I was able to lay the foundations of a reflection that would lead to the creation of the “World Ethics Committee for a Peaceful Use of Space”. This Committee, now nearing the end of its formation, has as its main mission to devise new legislation of international scope that could make it possible to avoid a number of abuses, such as the introduction of advertising in space, or to put an end to certain current practices causing an ever more marked pollution of space, pollution due in particular to the complete lack of “propriety” of the various space agencies, which — rather like oil tankers flushing their tanks at sea — rid themselves without further concern of their rockets’ third stages, leaving behind so much debris which, travelling at speeds of the order of 11 km per second, turns into so many projectiles.

Today, then, as an artist, I am happy to note that by its strength alone a Space Art concept, the Celestial Wheel, although not yet implemented, will have succeeded in raising questions and in drawing the institution into forward-looking reflection, suggesting that art can be the most remarkable and most effective vector of awareness.

THE “MESSAGES FROM HUMANKIND TO THE UNIVERSE” OPERATION

The other concept of which I am also the author and designer, linking Art and Space, was — unlike the previous one — carried through to completion. It too illustrates the social change we are living through, in which points of view are shifting, in which knowledge of scientific origin is tracing new horizons, in which the very definitions of the work of Art are being reshaped. In this case, the concept “Messages from Humankind to the Universe” corresponds to an operation carried out between 6 June 1986 and 26 January 1987.

No doubt the seeds of this operation were contained and present in our cultural environment (without having really been identified as such); no doubt, too, the “tools” for bringing it about were already there

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(radio telescope, telematics, media), but no doubt all these elements had never yet come together at the same time. Was it, moreover, this latent presence of these various elements that allowed the operation to enjoy the success it did? That is quite possible.

But before coming to the concept itself, I must also say that this Messages from Humankind to the Universe operation brought together three facts — which lent it credibility — all three of them dating from the last twenty years:

— thus, as was already mentioned at the beginning of this article, for the first time, less than twenty years ago, humanity had at last been able to see its planet from outside,

— recently, knowledge of scientific origin has led us to understand that it might be plausible for intelligences “other” than our own to be present in the Universe,

— finally, telematics having made its appearance in our immediate environment, it now offers us means of solicitation and action, like so many extensions — hitherto unknown — of ourselves.

Thus, between 6 June and 25 January, anyone who wished, if they so desired and whenever they felt like it, was offered the opportunity to enter via Minitel a Message of two pages at most, the message they would have wished to convey about themselves to those “Others” than ourselves. It was further specified that all the messages thus collected would be transmitted into the universe from one of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world, that of Nançay, that this transmission would be directed towards the heart of our Galaxy, a heart these messages would reach in 30,000 years, a galaxy they would leave for good in 100,000 years. (The mobile “mirror” of the Nançay radio telescope indeed makes it possible to “aim” at precise points in the galaxy.) It was also stated that these messages would depart for eternity (allowing for the attenuation of the signal) and that they travelled at the speed of light.

Naturally, given the undeniable lack of scientific culture of most of our contemporaries (how could anyone know everything about everything where astronomy and astrophysics are concerned?), and to avoid the operation being taken for some fictional hoax, it was clearly and explicitly stated that the International Scientific Community endorsed it. (François Biraud, a CNRS astrophysicist at Meudon, notably supervised its transmission by the radio telescope.)

Moreover, several world-renowned scientists, some of them well known to the general public, had done me the very great kindness of giving me their message, the very one they had typed on the Minitel. Such was the case of Jean Audouze, Michel Cassé, Jean-Claude Pecker and Hubert Reeves, for example, whose messages I hastened to pass on to the press. A true guarantee of success, I had the pleasure of seeing the media literally seize upon the operation and spread the word. From then on the public was exposed to repeated information, if not daily then at least weekly, throughout the seven months that the collection of messages lasted. “Le Monde” twice honoured me with its columns, the “Quotidien du Peuple” in its edition of 23 August 1986 explained the principle of the operation, the radio stations, France Inter, France culture, RTL, Europe 1, the various television channels, with TF1 having the exclusive on the launch… in short, all the media took part, turning me as much into an ambassador as into a servant of the said operation.

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Thus a proposal — to send one’s message — systematically re-injected by the media into the “crowd”, was day after day to take shape, take form and make sense. Heterogeneous at first, as time did its work, a content of messages would soon reveal itself which, in the same way that statistical averages and curves “reveal” and make visible, would soon “draw” the spirit of an era, allowing it to be perceived in its collective unconscious, rather like a photograph one still believed blank which, caught all at once by its developer, renders its account.

Use of the server (via 36 15) was steady: 50,000 people in seven months, that is, around 200 to 250 a day. Most of them consulted the various items of information which, over some 200 pages, set out data on the cosmos in general as well as on the various programmes and the history of the international scientific community’s search for these possible extraterrestrial intelligences. One in five people left a message and, in order to allow cross-analyses, the Minitel screens invited anyone who wished, in addition to the text of their message, to give their name, age, profession, hobby, and the place where they were at the moment they typed their message.

Over these seven months of collection, I was able to follow all the messages that had arrived during the day or the preceding days, and so read a little of the hearts or concerns of my contemporaries, at least of those who had felt the desire to inscribe in electromagnetic letters, and for eternity, a small fragment of themselves, in what they felt to be essential, grave or frivolous to communicate.

On certain evenings at that time, I was filled with the joy of existing and of seeing what might have remained a mere idea release its existence and its essence.

And so it was that on 26 January 1987, at 10:00 UT, the greatest collective work of art ever conceived by Man, the most extraordinary communication venture, soared into the Universe from the Nançay radio telescope, in the form of an electromagnetic ribbon more than 1 billion kilometres long, an electromagnetic ribbon that left the Earth at some 300,000 kilometres per second, an electromagnetic ribbon venturing towards the centre of our galaxy, a coded electromagnetic ribbon containing the testimony of more than 10,000 human beings expressing their sense of themselves, of their aspirations, their contradictions, their differences, human beings thinking in the Cosmos who, for the first time, had set out to address those possible “Others” than themselves…

As I write these lines, this electromagnetic ribbon is some two light years away from us: it has not yet passed its first star, which it will not meet for a few more years. After that, it will come across one every four years on average.

Naturally, this operation will very soon be the subject of a book, in which 200 messages out of the ten thousand received will be selected so as to be representative, and which, quite apart from the pleasure they will give in the reading, will be the subject of content analysis and of the studies that modern linguistics allows.

I could not, of course, end this article without giving you a few of these messages, as a reward. Here, in no particular order, are some extracts!

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“…what if consciousness were a universal quality that, as in a game of ducks and drakes, bounced from being to being, from place to place across space and time? Life on Earth flows by too quickly, it slips away like a regret. And where does it go?” (Marcelle Klein, aged 84)

“…I love Florence all the way to the stars and I want the whole universe to know it” (Pierre, aged 17, secondary-school pupil)

“…here people die, is that normal?” (Michel G., unemployed)

“…My name is Sylvie, I am 16, on Earth I have no friend”

“…Beware of us!” (anonymous)

“…What strange music must be reaching you from our planet”, (J. Brenot, aged 37, mother of two).

“…I would like to caress your intelligence with mine as a sign of a probably posthumous friendship” (Annie, nurse, aged 24)

“…Swear to us that you have done better than us, who have only done our best”. (Françoise Armengaud, Professor of Philosophy)

“…Why should a part of me not live on in you, remember” — “Our Earth is superb but we are destroying it. It holds out because it is strong, but for how long?” — “And if we tell you: in the beginning was the word… does that mean anything to you? If so, let us know… quickly”.

“What is the place of Humour in the Universe?” — “I look towards the sky and the stars, the only space that inspires Love and Peace in me”…

I truly believe it is a great stroke of luck to be an artist in the contemporary period.

Jean-Marc Philippe

Agence France Presse dispatch:

FRFR FRA0414 3 G 0318 FRA / AFP-FE78 Telematics-universe prev From Minitel… to extraterrestrials

VIERZON, 26 Jan (AFP) — Nearly 10,000 messages collected by Minitel over seven months throughout France were sent on Monday from the radio astronomy research centre at Nançay (Cher) to extraterrestrials by Mr Jean-Marc Philippe, the promoter of this experiment, it was learnt on site.

Since 1^st June 1986, the messages, sent by Minitel to a host server, have been stored on floppy disks, run through a computer and encoded, before finally being adapted for the Nançay radio telescope, which has a large antenna 45 m high and 300 m long and a mobile mirror of the same dimensions.

“The messages recorded on an electromagnetic ribbon will travel through space at the speed of light for several million years,” explained Mr Philippe, “they will meet the first star in 20 years.

Nearly a third of the senders launched calls for help into the beyond in the face of the Earth’s deterioration. “Every question to which we do not know the answer has been asked, as if these extraterrestrials were assumed to be more intelligent than us and able to answer them,” said Mr Philippe. But many others are romantic, such as this young man who writes: “I love Florence all the way to the stars and I want the whole universe to know it”.

Mr Philippe, an artist with a scientific training, originally from the Cher and living in Paris, is passionate about the relationship between the arts and science. For him, this is “a work of art”. “The means are not the same but the approach is similar,” he explains. “Writing these messages called upon the imagination of the French and allowed them to see the universe from a different perspective”.

sw/PGb AFP 261824 JAN 87

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THE CELESTIAL WHEEL