As the prologue to the first contemporary art exhibition series produced by Three-Body Universe, First Contact aims to explore how The Three-Body Problem, as a work of science fiction, a cultural symbol, and a platform bridging science and imagination, can give rise to creative practices that resonate and intersect with it. Rather than visualising scenes from the book or reiterating concepts from the original novel, the exhibition takes the story of The Three-Body Problem as a departure point and an open question. It invites the original work to address pressing and thought-provoking issues concerning current technological development and scientific research, engaging with the reality that we live in.
The universe remains unsettlingly silent.
This silence might represent a tacit consensus among civilisations, arise from insurmountable gaps in time, or reflect a deeper, unfathomable intent of the cosmos. The great silence, like a multifaceted mirror, carries the self-projections of possible cosmic civilisations, lingering before their “first contact.” When the once-silent universe begins to echo, how does a civilisation interpret signals or languages beyond itself, and how does it re-anchor its own existence? Our understanding of Earth may no longer be an overview effect from orbit, nor even the backward glance of Voyager 1 before it left the solar system. What may seem like an exploration unrelated to daily life—such as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)—acts like a lever in space, prying open our imaginations of uncharted stellar relationships, compelling us to reflect on Earth itself, ponder and rehearse possible boisterous interstellar futures, and question where we might go.
To this day, alien stars remain absolutely unreachable. The “first contact” of civilisations can be loaded with immense science fictional tension, revolving around listening and decoding, anticipation and unease, technological prowess, and the desire to communicate—perhaps as intimacy, perhaps as a contest. Our assumptions about intelligent life forms in the universe may all be tested by this yet-to-happen “first contact.” In The Three-Body Problem, the true first contact happens in the invisible realm: a secret but never-fading radio wave sent from the peak of Radar Mountain into space, and an invisible but intelligent particle arriving from the vastness of interstellar space. In those minuscule dimensions imperceptible to the human eye, a massive, planetary-level exchange of messages is taking place.
The membrane between science fiction and reality is porous. As Haraway puts it, the boundary between science fiction and social reality is merely an optical illusion. The exhibition First Contact attempts to respond to the scenarios before and during such an contact between two civilisations, exploring how the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is also embedded in our knowledge, experiences, and speculations about our own Earth: solar observation, fundamental physics experiments, radio communication, and depictions of an ancient universe. The first contact is not merely a moment when two civilisations touch but a delicate thread suspended between the known and the unknown. In The Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio discusses the strange situation where our senses yield to indirect perception via new measuring tools, especially how technical instruments themselves become scientific proofs or even irrefutable proofs.
It has been forty years since Virilio made this argument, and we remain within this continuum: astronomical telescopes are stars, particle colliders are subatomic realities, and weather satellites are the weather. In The Three-Body Problem, the notion that “the entire universe is flickering for you” challenges this irrefutable scientific reality in a dramatic way, revealing another cosmic order. Science fiction is sometimes a cognitive method, allowing us to unbind our imagination of technology from linearity. The artworks invited for First Contact can be seen as responses to the themes raised in The Three-Body Problem about survival modes of civilisations and reflections on the nature of science, traversing the thin membrane between science fiction and reality, and unfolding contemporary, urgent issues layer by layer within a sci-fi context.
The exhibition invites viewers to freely navigate between two spaces representing the perspectives of Earth and extraterrestrial civilisations, speculating on forms of intelligence or life “other-than-us.” The Unnamed Star could be the Trisolaran system from the script of The Three-Body Problem, or it could be any cosmic coordinate harbouring intelligent life; The Earthbound focuses on how Earthly science explores potential signals from extraterrestrial civilisations, delving into the foundations of physical reality, or perhaps describing itself to a future visitor; while the Contact Zone stands at the crossroads of outward exploration (such as space telescopes) and downward introspection (weather satellites and communication networks), hovering between the extremes of technological determinism and technological blockade, highlighting the ghostly entanglement between technology and bodily/cognitive systems. There are no strict boundaries between these three spaces, just as our imaginations of alien worlds are always “earth-like but not,” and only by preserving those elements akin to Earth can science fiction imaginations gain profound, realistic significance.
If we consider the “First Contact” as a thought experiment—a stone tossed into the silent lake of the universe—it might stir up numerous possibilities in this version of “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” that we find ourselves in.
The Unnamed Star
The first section of the exhibition is dedicated to an “Unnamed Star,” which could be the Trisolaran system from The Three-Body Problem, or another coordinate in the universe harbouring intelligent life. This “earth-like but not” realm conveys multiple imaginings of the cosmos: symbols from ancient astronomical records whose meanings have been lost, radio telescopes standing in desolate lands, an extraterrestrial anthropologist under the alias Sophon, unknown signal towers reaching towards the sky, and three blazing stars. Many elements in this space are derived from Earth, yet they seem to construct a parallel Earth, a nameless/unnamed star with its own past.
Earthbound
The other side of the exhibition narrates humanity’s observation and contemplation of the cosmos from a grounded, present-day perspective. Human radio signals have already spread across interstellar space, covering a radius of 128 light-years centred on Earth. Above the surface, there have long been listeners of deep-space radio signals—some tracking satellites streaking across the sky, others sifting through mysterious messages from the depths of space. Earth sciences are not only probing for potential signals from extraterrestrial civilisations and delving into the foundations of physical reality but might also be offering a self-description to a future visitor. The artworks in this section carry traces of research sites from different periods and reflect the creators’ poetic reflections on the universe.
Contact Zone
Orbital space is the true boundary zone between Earth and outer space. Before we had the capability for deep space voyages, geosynchronous orbit became a crossroads for outward exploration (such as space telescopes) and downward observation (like weather satellites and communication networks). Between the polars of technological determinism and technological blockade, there seems to be a ghostly entanglement between technology and bodily/cognitive systems. At this “earth-space boundary,” this entanglement appears to unravel and manifest.
On October 15, 2024, the National Mid- to Long-Term Development Program for Space Science (2024–2050) was released, with priority development areas including research on extreme universe, space-time ripples, a panoramic view of solar-earth, habitable planets, and biological and physical sciences in space.
On September 25, 2024, the ALICE experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) was investigating the complex dynamic behaviour among three particles interacting through the strong nuclear force, examining how three subatomic particles behave under the simultaneous influence of strong interactions.
In August 2024, Chenoa Tremblay, a radio astronomer from SETI Institute, and Steven Tingay, an astrophysicist at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, published a study on identifying potential extraterrestrial civilisations by targeting electromagnetic radiation from “techno signatures”—artificial devices capable of harnessing the energy of a single star or even connecting multiple stars.
In April 2024, Yuan Ding and collaborators observed, for the first time, the dynamic propagation of electromagnetic waves (light waves), confirming that specific structures in the solar corona and large celestial bodies like planets can act as amplifiers for electromagnetic signals, potentially enabling interstellar communication or energy transmission.
Text by Iris LONG