Artists Send Symphony to the Stars

By Pam Wigley Since the beginning of time, people around the world have looked up at the vast sky and wondered, "Is anybody out there?" Carnegie Mellon University Professor of Art and pioneering space artist Lowry Burgess thinks so, and he's banking on the fact that life forms in space appreciate the arts the same way humans do. The telescope at Dwingeloo Radio Observatory, The Netherlands, where the transmission took place Oct. To that end, Burgess and colleague Andrew Kaiser, a longtime space musician, composed "Symphony for Andromeda," a "10-year labor of love" that incorporates an extraordinary array of natural sounds and original music in five separate movements called canticles. The symphony, sponsored by Dutch interdisciplinary artist Daniela de Paulis, was broadcast to the galaxy Andromeda on Oct. 4 from a large radio telescope at Dwingeloo Radio Observatory in the Netherlands. It is, Burgess said, the first time anything like this has been done. The work is traveling in outer space toward the Andromeda galaxy 2.5 million light years from Earth.