In the early 1990s, Andrew Lagowski founded his solo project S.E.T.I., partly to draw attention to the eponymous Californian institute that has been engaged since 1984 in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The artist’s musical raw material consists of files of extraterrestrial oscillations circulating on the internet, captured by scientists working on various space programmes and translated into sound. The sounds of imagined forms of communication with extraterrestrial life forms are also woven into the music.

Over the years, Lagowski has repeatedly found creative new interpretations of the four letters of his project name. In response to humanity’s failures in the face of manifold crises, they once stood for “Search for Evidence of Terrestrial Intelligence.” The composition of his newest work, Observational Field, brought yet another meaning: here the acronym stands for “Scientific Evidence Translated for Introspection.” Once again the macrocosm is mirrored in the microcosm, as extraterrestrial oscillations translated into sound are reinterpreted as reflections of cognitive processes. The mental journey out into the cosmos becomes a search for the innermost self.