I had to phone someone so I picked on you, but then I changed my mind and instead of phoning I decided to use this new-ish medium aptly titled Medium.

This a story about how one very mobile graphic designer from Portland, Oregon (hint: it’s me) met a retired BBC Archivist in Washington, DC (not a hint: it’s not me) just to get a bit of inspiration for some poster design.

THE BACKSTORY

A little over a month ago, I was invited by the talented and affable Portland designer Michael Buchino to participate in a group show of poster artists as part of Design Week Portland. The show is At the Altar of a Starman: A Poster Art Tribute to Ziggy Stardust, (which in turn is part of the larger mixed media show, Design Rocks: A Rock ’n’ Roll Art & Gala from Mars).

At the Altar of a Starman: A Poster Art Tribute to Ziggy Stardust is a gallery of original works from 31 artists from around the globe and will be open for public viewing at Refuge PDX from October 10th to November 16th, 2014.

I promptly accepted the invite (any excuse to design something Ziggy related works for me, was my response, I believe) and I diligently set to work putting together some inspiration for my contribution.

As part of my normal workflow, before I set the dimensions of an Illustrator file, before I open my sketchpad, before I even think about clicking any icon that looks like it could be remotely involved with the Adobe Creative Suite, I like to compile as much inspiration across as many different artistic mediums as possible; everything from found notes stashed from swap meets to tangled video on VHS can end up in my inspiration morgue. At some point, while avidly gathering Ziggy inspiration for my poster via microfische archives at the library (yep, it still exists), I came across some old news-clippings regarding a bizarre event which occurred on BBC Two in 1972.

THE PSEUDO-STORY

In April of that year, BBC2 was evidently “hijacked” by a series of transmissions from what appeared to be of extraterrestrial origin… namely from Mars.

Yes, you read that right: transmissions from Mars… to Earth, as in, “Dear Earth, what’s up? I’m on your BBC. Love, Mars.”

Okay. It’s total nonsense, right? Or at least something near total nonsense, but you have to admit, it’s an intriguing story any way you spin it. Plus one that I hadn’t seen bandied about the “History” Channel ad infinitum, and was relative to the poster art I was cooking up, so I continued down the rabbit hole.

BBC2's “Test Card F” (ca. ~1971)

According to one news source, the anomalous late-night event featured a handful of strange images and reported re-interpretations of the BBC2 test card. After a few minutes of what was described as an “alleged Starman” the BBC returned to its normal off-air image, Test Card F. Given that the event happened in the middle of the night, while no programming was scheduled, very few people even noticed.

For those that did notice, the event was explained away as an elaborate hoax in the footnotes of a few newspapers, but (as far as I can tell) the method of the pranksters remains unclear to this day. How they “hacked” BBC2’s transmissions and how they made their signal appear to be emanating from somewhere near Mars remains an interesting story in the not-very-well-known Book of Unsolved Transmission Mysteries During the Cold War Era. But it is the type of fodder which keeps tin-foil topped conspiracy theorists and graphic designers like yours truly awake in bed at night.

NASA’s Mariner 9 space probe reached Mars on November 14th, 1971.

Theories regarding security holes in transmissions from NASA’s Mariner 9 (which was the first unmanned spacecraft to reach Mars exactly five months prior) were proposed, but laughed away by NASA, and are shaky at best. It’s also worth noting a few theories claim that the transmissions came from inside NASA itself as part of either a test program, or an elaborate joke.

Kansai Yamamoto’s striped body suit for Ziggy on the Aladdin Sane tour.

HOW ALL OF THIS HULLABALOO RELATES TO THE ZIGGY POSTER

What drew me to the story originally was that the images which flashed on television screens across the UK for a few brief minutes that night in ‘72 purportedly played a defining role in the mythopoeia behind the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, as well as in avant-garde fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto’s surreal costuming for Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars. According to at least one source, everyone’s favorite mythic rock god from the 70s had witnessed the anomaly and it inspired a couple albums, some crazy cosmic costumes, and a few out-of-this world rock tours.

Cool, right? But that’s all the information I could find on the subject. Beyond the sparse news clippings in microform, I could find nothing else on the matter; I wanted some video footage, audio recordings, or in the very least a still of what was broadcast, but that was it. Nothing turned up. And for the first time since the days of AOL, the internet was failing me.

THE HUNT

After a day or two of intense google searching and lurking every conspiracy forum on the internet (you have no clue how much of the internet is dedicated to a race of non-people called Reptilians), I finally decided to go straight to the source and contacted the people who run the BBC Archives. After much back in forth with them they reluctantly pointed me in the direction of one Mr. Robert Jones, a former archivist for the station who worked there from the 1960s through the 1990s. But they wouldn’t give me full contact information for him. Just his name.

Do you know how many Robert Jones exist in England, let alone the world? Take my word for it: there are several, but only one of them had the information I was searching for. It was a bit of a triumph for me when I finally did get in contact with the correct Robert Jones via email. I’ve got some pretty mad Google-Fu skills, but truly what helped crack the case were some close friends who work in similar fields in London; they did all the real legwork (or so they say). When I received an email back from a man who confirmed he was the former BBC Archivist I had been looking for, I became so excited I accidentally threw a bowl of granola + kefir across my kitchen and shot a jet of coffee through my nose (#Portland).

I explained to him that I had been researching the anomalous BBC2 event in relation to a poster project inspired by Ziggy Stardust, and asked if he knew anything more specific about it. He replied with an extremely enthusiastic email which — because enthusiasm is more contagious than the Spanish flu — infected me with some extreme enthusiasm as well. When he relayed that he would be visiting Washington, DC this month and would be happy to bring with him some of the things I was curious about, I promptly replied I could probably come out to meet him from Portland...

I honestly don’t think Europeans know how far away Portland, Oregon is from our nation’s capital, so here is a handy reference for all my friends across the Atlantic. First: Washington, DC and Washington State are two different places; one is in the Pacific Northwest, the other is way away over on the other side of the country. That said, to put things in relative perspective, Portland is approximately 233 kilometers (145 miles) further away from Washington, DC than London is from Cairo. Remember that little bit of trivia next time you fly into NY and expect all your friends in California to come meet you for the weekend. The USA is enormous.

So, if I wanted to meet with Mr. Jones, I had a bit of traveling to do, but I had become slightly obsessed with the subject and had some friends I was meaning to visit on the East Coast anyway, so tickets were arranged and a meeting was scheduled.

THE ENCOUNTER

With the deadline for the poster looming, I hopped a plane a week later, and after lazily touring a bit around the National Mall (here’s a picture of ‘Washington’s Monument’ I took), I finally got to shake hands and chat a bit with the elusive Robert Jones, former BBC Archivist.

He was kind enough to take the time out of of his busy schedule to patiently answer my slew of ridiculous questions and share with me some of the stories and pictures relating to the incident at BBC2 that I’d been obsessing over for the past month and a half. Right away he was extremely adamant in saying that he subscribes fully to the hoax theory, and puts “little credence to any of this Martian business.” However, he offered no explanation to how the transmission got hacked, only that it was. I wasn’t really expecting an explanation, so that was fine, because what he showed me was totally worth the trip.

He had brought with him some actual archival footage of the event which he showed to me over a television set in his hotel. In total, the broadcast lasted a little over 4 minutes and consisted almost entirely of a wavy image of what looked like a modified BBC test card with some fuzzy white noise and a heavily affected voice claiming to be a “Starman” with the sequence of words: “Children, Lose it, Use it, Boogie” repeated in succession. All this was followed by a quick clip of what was easily recognized as Judy Garland singing in the Wizard of Oz. Whether it was a hoax (likely), or an actual Martian transmission (doubtful), I can’t say, but it was certainly inspirating. It was plainly obvious inspiration for the mythos behind Ziggy Stardust as well, so I got exactly what I came for. The parallels were so unmistakable that it made me wonder if maybe the entire thing wasn’t a clever promotional stunt for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust to begin with.

Understandably, Mr. Jones did not allow me to keep any copies of the footage he graciously shared, but I did manage to snap a picture of the modded test card, which — as far as I know — is the only one in existence.

THE POSTER

I’ve recreated as near a replica as I possibly could of the same image which appeared on BBC2 that night in April of 1972.