Art/science laboratory
Alien Language Interface
A.L.I is a research, documentation and creation workshop devoted to interstellar contact languages, proposed by David Guez, artist and author. It explores how a non-human intelligence might recognize a signal, understand a structure, interpret a pattern, receive an archive or answer a message.
The laboratory connects SETI, METI, exobiology, radio astronomy, information theory, cinema, literature, sound art and installations. Its purpose is to invent conceptual and artistic forms for making readable what might circulate between two worlds.
LABO
The LABO notebook gathers ongoing paths: objects, signals, languages, archives, fictions, protocols and possible experiments around first contact.
05.07.2026
From Lovelock and Margulis to contemporary comparisons between neuronal networks and the cosmic web, this article studies the hypothesis of global organisms: living Earth, stellar bodies, network-universe and the brain as a possible structural miniature of the cosmos.
04.07.2026
From Solaris to Stalker, from Annihilation to Sun Ra, pop culture imagines forms of contact where the extraterrestrial does not send a message: it becomes environment, memory, music, climate, or zone of transformation.
04.07.2026
A precise exploration of fractals: history, geometry, natural examples, the golden ratio, morphogenesis, plants and the hypothesis of an interstellar language based on dynamic forms repeated across scales.
03.07.2026
An A.L.I study of earthly artifacts, scripts, machines and monuments that raise the question of messages without readers: a critical xenoarchaeology of the unknown.
03.07.2026
An academic reading of Deleuze and Guattari for A.L.I: rhizome, becoming, extreme otherness, collective intelligence and AI as a non-centralized translation milieu.
02.07.2026
An A.L.I article on Umwelt: the perceptual world proper to each being, from Jakob von Uexküll to non-human senses, and the hypothesis that contact language begins by translating perceptual milieus.
02.07.2026
What if poetry were an ultimate form of communication with non-human intelligence: not because it explains better, but because it carries rhythm, silence, image, ambiguity and the unconscious.
01.07.2026
An A.L.I article on the Boltzmann brain, entropy, spontaneous observers, the cosmological measure problem, and season 1 episode 8 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
01.07.2026
An A.L.I article on the perceptron, the evolution of neural networks, deep learning, neuronal cultures, brain organoids and the hypothesis of cultivated intelligence as a new medium of contact.
30.06.2026
A research article on how psychology, from Jung to contemporary neuroscience, approaches the alien, collective consciousness, parapsychology and the hypothesis of invisible information channels.
29.06.2026
Starting from Inception, fractals and lucid-dream research, this article imagines dreaming as a communication interface: an unstable space where motifs, images and messages can repeat across scales.
28.06.2026
Men in Black offers a useful fiction for A.L.I: discreet coexistence between alien species, imagined government agreements, Area 51 and Orion’s galaxy as a model of nested scales.
28.06.2026
A survey of literature, anthropology, hypnosis, lucid dreaming, meditation, out-of-body experiences, remote viewing and extrasensory narratives, asking what these states could contribute to A.L.I.
27.06.2026
Starting from John Archibald Wheeler's intuition, this article explores the idea that reality may arise from acts of information, then extends it toward qubits, entanglement and the possibility of an interstellar language based on quantum correlations.
27.06.2026
Cosmic microwave background, cosmic web, gravitational waves, micro/macro scales and the hypothesis of communication at very large scale.
26.06.2026
From ancient atomism to SETI/METI debates, a philosophical journey through plurality of worlds, language and the ethics of contact.
26.06.2026
What if DNA were biological archive, cosmic code and possible contact medium? Shared bases, panspermia, hidden signature and an A.L.I hypothesis.
26.06.2026
What if an evolved intelligence invented its own language? From AI neuralese to AI as mediator between two planetary civilizations.
25.06.2026
An exploration of exomathematics as a possible language between intelligences: Greg Egan, formal structures, light-speed delay and A.L.I prototypes.
25.06.2026
From semiology, from Saussure to Peirce, and from a scene in Disclosure Day where an extraterrestrial message seems to pass through a weather presenter’s body before being written as an equation, this post asks a central A.L.I question: how can we recognize language when it changes medium?
24.06.2026
Quantum entanglement suggests an instantaneous link between two particles separated by vast distances. But can that link become an intergalactic message? For A.L.I, the answer becomes a reflection on correlations, shared keys and common memory.
22.06.2026
From Flatland to the hypercube, from the 3D-to-2D passage to the 4D-to-3D hypothesis: understanding slices, projections and anomalies to imagine how A.L.I could decode or send a message between universes with different dimensions.
22.06.2026
Starting from Interstellar, imagining a message that does not only cross space but an additional dimension: temporal bookshelf, watch, gravity, code and possible A.L.I protocols.
22.06.2026
EME uses the Moon as a radio reflector: a message leaves Earth, bounces off the lunar surface and returns a few seconds later. For A.L.I, this device can become a clock, a loop and a possible message to the future.
21.06.2026
Exploring e^(ix)=cos(x)+i sin(x) and e^(iπ)+1=0 as a bridge between rotation, wave, phase, signal and possible mathematical language for A.L.I.
21.06.2026
Ancient Mars: past water, habitability, potential biosignatures, current research and the cultural history of Martians in literature and cinema.
21.06.2026
Current exoplanet research, possible forms of life, extrapolated numbers by galaxy and across the observable universe, and questions for A.L.I.
21.06.2026
Comparing animal communication and human language to imagine extraterrestrial language: bees, vervet monkeys, dolphins, birds, bonobos, parrots and anthropocentric limits.
21.06.2026
An analysis of La Soupe aux choux as a first-contact comedy: flatulence as signal, soup as exchange protocol, body as antenna and biological transmission.
20.06.2026
A historical and contemporary analysis of crop circles: hoaxes, geometry, famous examples, the Arecibo/Chilbolton motif and their potential as an extraterrestrial communication language.
20.06.2026
Exploring telepathy as a communication motif in ufology and abduction narratives: inner voice, mental images, commands, memory and implications for A.L.I.
20.06.2026
Exploring phonemes as building blocks for an intermediate language between human speech, guttural sound, breath, vibration and nonverbal signal.
20.06.2026
A.L.I post on mathematics as a possible foundation for interstellar contact: prime numbers, physical constants, encoding, SETI, AI, exoplanets and the limits of a universal language.
19.06.2026
An analysis of the alien message in Contact: prime numbers, returned TV signal, technical pages, 3D reading and the Machine plans as an interstellar language.
19.06.2026
The 1977 Wow! signal detected by Big Ear: 6EQUJ5, the hydrogen line, SETI hypotheses, scientific limits and A.L.I paths around signal as proto-language.
19.06.2026
A look at language in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival: heptapod logograms, circular writing, nonlinear time, Sapir-Whorf and original A.L.I visual examples.
19.06.2026
A critical typology of extraterrestrial figures in UFO narratives: small humanoids, Greys, luminous entities, reptilians, insectoids, robots and non-humanoids, with archives and photos to consult.
19.06.2026
A critical summary of the Ummo affair: Ummite letters, documents, symbols, vocabulary, the soncepts hypothesis and its relevance for extraterrestrial-language research.
19.06.2026
Rethinking the Arecibo message today: binary grid, exoplanets, climate, AI, networks, creation protocol and critical links with crop circles.
19.06.2026
Remaking a disk or message-object for space today: sounds, images, languages, data, instructions, politics of representation and decoding protocol.
19.06.2026
A free replica of the contact instrument from Close Encounters of the Third Kind: reference photo, score, five tones, keyboard or synthesizer input, light panels.
19.06.2026
An A.L.I radio device with antenna and transcoder: diagrams, difficulty levels, equipment to buy and programming paths for transforming text into waves.
19.06.2026
Rereading the Drake equation in the age of exoplanets: atmospheres, habitable zones, stellar stability, ambiguous biosignatures and detectability.
18.06.2026
A luminous Morse finger to build from an LED ring, a thimble, a glove or a claw: from hacked toy to two Bluetooth fingers capable of talking to each other.
Cultural references
A living library for thinking about extraterrestrial life, signals, interstellar messages and the difficulties of first-contact language.
1978 The central book on the making of the Voyager Golden Record: sounds, images, music and playback principles.
1985 A key SETI novel about receiving a structured signal and the tensions between science, politics and belief.
2000 An essay on the hypothesis that complex life may be rare, useful for balancing astrobiological optimism.
1898 A major Martian reference: invasion, technological otherness, human fragility and the modern imaginary of civilizations from Mars.
2001 A broad introduction to the astronomical, chemical and biological conditions of the search for life.
1950 An essential literary cycle on Mars as cultural mirror: colonization, nostalgia, human projection and traces of another civilization.
2010 A reflection on SETI, cosmic silence, search strategies and the consequences of detection.
1440 A decisive text for thinking a cosmos not centered on humans and the possibility of inhabitants of other worlds that cannot be judged from our own categories.
1584 A major text in the plurality-of-worlds tradition: the universe no longer has a single center and may contain innumerable worlds.
1686 A classic that makes the plurality of inhabited worlds accessible through conversation, between astronomy, imagination and philosophy.
1755 Kant places the possibility of inhabitants of other planets within a general cosmology, speculative but fertile for thinking intelligence elsewhere.
1853 An important critique of inhabited worlds: useful for thinking about evidence and the risk of human projection.
1862 A major popular astronomy work that spread the idea of lives adapted to other worlds.
1982 A long historical study of the debate over inhabited worlds, from antiquity to the modern age.
1986 A reference work on how science, theology and philosophy debated extraterrestrial life.
Ier s. av. J.-C. Poetic atomism: if the same elements combine elsewhere, Earth may not be the only stage for life.
1990 Foundational text in which Wheeler develops the It from Bit intuition: physical facts as informational answers.
1995 A hard-SF short-story collection that frames Egan's speculative logic: cognition, mathematics, identity and formal systems.
2006 A major essay popularizing the idea of the universe as physical computation and information processing.
1884 A foundational text for thinking across dimensions: a sphere crossing a 2D world helps imagine a 4D message received in 3D.
1969 Critical book on the limits of simple perceptrons.
1961 An essential reference on radically other intelligence: not a language to translate, but an alterity that exceeds our categories.
1987- In the Culture series, Minds are civilizational, diplomatic and strategic AIs: they shift language toward mediation.
1944 A foundational book that frames life as a carrier of molecular order and transmissible information.
1981 A book in which Francis Crick develops the idea of a possible cosmic origin of life and popularizes directed panspermia.
1998 An essential text about first-contact linguistics, non-human writing and the effects of language on thought.
2007 A short story of exomathematics where distant civilizations encounter radically different mathematical structures.
2010 A major novella about artificial intelligences that grow, learn, form attachments and develop forms of language and relation.
2021 A contemporary novel using panspermia and extraterrestrial biology as engines for communication and survival.
2005 A story about the time scale of galactic communication and the waiting imposed by light speed.
2015-2018 Research program on the links between quantum information, entanglement, gravity and the emergence of spacetime.
1973 A speculative scientific paper proposing that an advanced civilization could have intentionally seeded other worlds.
1974 An iconic radio message composed as a binary image: numbers, chemistry, DNA, human figure, planets and telescope.
1977 An archive object sent beyond the Solar System: sounds, images, music and greetings as a terrestrial self-portrait.
2001 A famous crop-circle pattern because it appears to replay and alter the structure of the Arecibo message.
1966- A UFO archive of letters, symbols, invented vocabulary and documentary strategies around an alleged civilization from Ummo.
1977 A radio trace turned cultural icon: a brief, unrepeated signal transformed into a sign by the 6EQUJ5 annotation.
1961 A tool-formula that turns the question of communicating civilizations into discussable parameters and a research program.
1748 A mathematical relation condensing circle, wave, phase, exponential and complex numbers: a possible formal kernel for A.L.I.
1958 Foundational perceptron paper as a probabilistic brain-inspired model.
2022 Experiment coupling cultured neurons to a minimal game-like environment.
2023 Research proposal on organoids as supports for biological computing.
1936 A poetic educational film about the fourth dimension, slices, projections and the difficulty of seeing beyond our space.
1968 Contact without human language, based on object, evolution, mystery and radically other intelligence.
1982 A direct reference for the luminous finger: contact as bodily gesture, fingertip light and an emotional imagination of signal.
1977 First contact through motifs, tones, light and repetition: a sensory grammar of encounter.
1981 A rural first-contact comedy where signal passes through body, gas, food, hospitality and misunderstanding.
1997 Radio signal, decoding, machine, scientific proof and individual experience.
2009 A political and bodily approach to contact: alienness, fear, language, contamination and colonial relations.
2014 Habitability, survival, transmission, fictional fifth dimension and cosmic time.
2016 A key film for A.L.I: linguistic protocol, circular signs, translation, misunderstanding and non-human temporality.
2026 A recent fictional reference where media speech is rewritten as mathematical and semiological notation.
1977 A sound and light sequence that became a cultural model of contact: five pitches, repetition, response and translation into light.
1977 A Golden Record sound excerpt used on the homepage: Morse as minimal rhythm, archive and human cultural signal.
2007 Moonlight Sonata translated into Morse, sent to the Moon, reflected back and replayed with the losses of the journey.
2026 A set of sound excerpts created to explore breath, glottis, uvular friction and vibration as a possible prelinguistic layer.
Podcast An episode of Les Chemins de la philosophie on plurality of worlds, linking cosmology, metaphysics and human decentering.
Podcast An episode centered on Fontenelle, useful for understanding how life elsewhere becomes an accessible thought experiment.
Podcast A contemporary entry point into the political and philosophical issues raised by extraterrestrial contact.
Archive radio A France Culture archive on the question of life elsewhere in the universe.
Artistic references
These projects extend SETI, METI, Voyager and Arecibo through concrete gestures: simulating an alien message, sending an image, bouncing music off the Moon or turning a human archive into a space object.
A worldwide simulation of receiving an extraterrestrial message, with public participation in decoding.
SETI InstituteOne hundred micro-engraved images attached to the EchoStar XVI satellite as a durable orbital archive.
Creative TimeMoonlight Sonata translated into Morse code, sent to the Moon, reflected back and replayed with its losses.
Katie PatersonA participatory interstellar message sent toward Polaris, centered on humanity’s environmental relation to Earth.
ESAAn Ars Electronica / SETI residency imagining AI-generated hybrid organisms between microorganisms, algorithms and possible extraterrestrial life.
Ars ElectronicaA radio project turning brain waves into a signal sent into space, between neuroscience, radio astronomy and speculative telepathy.
PublicationA musical transmission toward exoplanet GJ273b: a coded, sonic and cultural message addressed to possible intelligence.
Sónar CallingAn installation and scientific fiction about moon geese, analogue habitats and early lunar travel imaginaries.
FACT LiverpoolBio-art and speculative astrobiology: selectively breeding fruit flies imagined as adapting to Titan, Saturn's moon.
Andy GracieA lunar text project: writing a word at cosmic scale and turning the Moon into a language surface.
Liliane LijnA transmission artwork using HAARP to send images, voice and sound into the ionosphere, at the edge of atmosphere and space.
Ghosts in the Air GlowA satellite sculpture conceived as a purely artistic space object, an orbital mirror and a question about who may write signs in the sky.
Nevada Museum of ArtAn immersive installation where vibrations, webs and bodies propose a haptic interspecies language for non-human communication.
Studio SaracenoPaintings, performances and visionary cosmology tied to claimed communication with a UFO entity: a historical archive of contact imaginaries.
The Drawing CenterA group exhibition of SETI Artists in Residence, including Rachel Sussman's Cosmic Microwave Sand Mandala.
NUMU Los GatosA residency program at the intersection of space research, imagination and public engagement.
SETI AIRA tiny artwork allegedly sent to the Moon: archive, secrecy and cultural trace.
MoMA