The Bite Back Movement, composed of Alexander Augustus (Illustration) and Seung youn Lee (Text), have crafted a tale of the deep past and deep future, which reflects the present. Their work 'Do Not Believe Me', is based on existing scientific evidence and mixed with imagination. It was created in collaboration with Dr. Kee-Woong Kim, from the Vital Signals Centre of the Korea Research Institute of Science and Standards (KRISS). This project was completed in Dajeon (Korea), Berlin and Schoppingen (Germany).
What do we think about being left alone in this world? How empty it must be! We wonder about aliens because we want humans to have some company in this situation. What if we believe that humans are the only intelligent creatures in this gigantic universe, and we cannot reach anyone else even after a billion years of travelling at the speed of light?! The idea makes our stomachs sink.
To imagine a story that has not yet been revealed, we had to look at an existing model first. We worked in collaboration with Dr. Kim Kwi-woong of the Korean Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS). He suggested that we first had to understand the environment in which life can exist in order to find the existence of aliens. And we had to see how various creatures evolved on Earth, in order to imagine the forms of aliens. We researched the evolution of humanity on Earth. If the temperature was only 1 degree higher or lower when there was only single cell life on Earth, human life would not have evolved. We exist only because of a series of tremendous coincidences. Our concept is that there is a planet somewhere in the universe, “Pale Blue Dot X”, which has similar conditions to Earth, but where the dinosaurs did not die out. Our imaginary planet's name came from a photo of the Earth taken by Voyager 1. This planet has the same environment as did Earth when dinosaurs still lived on it. How would intellectual life have been created and evolved in that environment where the dinosaurs may not have disappeared and the meteorites did not crash? The appearance of an alien in their golden age may suddenly feel like a superhero with special abilities to us.
We wondered why we have not met aliens yet? Maybe they are already here but we do not know how to communicate with them? They might be around us already as the source of all life - carbon, energy, and ultimately, in the purest form of a diamond. The idea of returning back to the energy we came from, interested us. As did the comparison with the human race, imagining our assent into the future. Following this idea Dr. Kim discussed Silicone Diamond Vacancy, which is a new area of research exploring traces of silicone within diamonds. So this would be our ancient alien, right here on Earth, and all of its stories are trapped in the mysterious silicone of these diamonds. Therefore, we adapted scientific knowledge with our own imaginations to create this story.