# Concept note — We Have Been Listening on One Channel

## Creative approach

The radio spectrum is rendered as a vast engraved nautical territory rather than a frequency chart. The visual argument is geographic: almost the entire landscape remains unsurveyed, while six decades of conventional SETI attention occupy one small vermilion inlet. A bright survey outline and flag make that tiny water-hole patch the first focal point even though it is physically dwarfed by the surrounding map.

Two separate ALMA pins sit far across the millimetre coast at 90.642 and 93.151 GHz. They reward a longer look without pretending that a candidate signal was found. The plate therefore distinguishes a large unsearched territory, the historically favored water hole, and the two narrow archived-observation windows in one self-contained frame.

## Visual system

- Near-16:9 landscape at 1672 × 941 pixels.
- Warm folded sea-chart paper with engraved coastlines, contour hatching, sounding numerals, and a restrained press impression.
- Three-ink discipline: parchment, sepia-black, and vermilion survey red.
- One large headline and five functional map labels, printed with the same grain as the chart.
- No starfield, nebula, radar sweep, hologram, telescope dish, spacecraft, alien imagery, decorative equation, or invented result.

## Generation disclosure

The hero image was created with **OpenAI GPT Image (built-in image generation tool)** from an original prompt written for this bounty. The final output was reviewed at full resolution for scientific wording, label count, material consistency, and prohibited imagery.