Communicating with aliens

Marguerite Humeau latest project looks at designing new communication devices that allow people to communicate with otherworldly creatures.

Could it be true that creatures are living under the ice cap of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa? Marguerite Humeau explores this rumour in her latest project The Things? – A Trip to Europa.

French designer Humeau’s most recent project The Things? – A Trip to Europa forms the second chapter in a design trilogy exploring the possibility of communication between worlds and the ways in which knowledge is generated through the impossibility of reaching an object of investigation through it being extinct, unknown or physically inaccessible.

Humeau’s idea is to create a series of props that reproduce exactly the same vibrations, chemical powder, flashes of light and other special effects in the hope of making an interspecies conversation possible through entering into a dialogue with the creatures or aliens in outer space.

The Things? – A Trip to Europa can also be seen as a new addition to the history of the invention of communication devices. The invention of some of the communication devices was intimately related to the will of people to communicate with invisible worlds.

The final stage of the project is set to take place in 2015 where Humeau will take a fictional trip to Europa, performed as a real expedition to Antarctica where she will test the various props she created for the project.

The first stage of The Things? – A Trip to Europa was recently presented as an exhibition conceived as a trailer. It includes the opening credits for the film of the future expedition that has not yet been shot, an epistolary novel and performance props for the first stunt designed to serenade outer space creatures. 

Watch the Talk with Marguerite Humeau