Eric Acuña
📺 Decoding the Invisible Matrix: From Signal Noise to the Source Code of Reality----------- SSTV (Slow-Scan Television)
Slow-Scan Television (SSTV) is a picture transmission method used by amateur radio operators to transmit and receive static images via radio. Unlike broadcast television which transmits 30 frames per second, SSTV transmits a single frame over several seconds or minutes, converting image data into audio tones.
When played aloud, an SSTV transmission sounds like a series of screeching chirp-and-buzz tones. A receiver or app captures this audio and decodes the frequencies back into a visual image, line by line.
fig 1. This transmission took place during the ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station) SSTV Special Event held from October 27 to October 29, 2018. The event was held in direct support of the "NASA On The Air" (NOTA) initiative, a year-long celebration commemorating NASA's 60th anniversary (1958–2018) and the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 8 mission.
In the realm of cybersecurity, SSTV represents a unique vector for data transmission, security awareness, and hidden communications.SSTV is an analog form of data hiding. Malicious actors or red teams can embed sensitive data, hidden text, or cryptographic keys inside an audio signal. Because it looks and sounds like normal radio static or retro interference, it can bypass standard digital network security firewalls. While we know that Cyber defense monitors digital networks. However, an SSTV signal can bridge an "air gap." A compromised machine with a speaker could broadcast a signal to an external radio receiver, leaking information completely outside the traditional internet infrastructure.
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Historically, threat actors have hidden instruction sets or configurations inside innocuous media. An SSTV audio file can be hosted on a public forum; malware downloading the audio can decode it locally to find its next server target. In authoritarian regimes where the internet is strictly monitored, censored, or shut down entirely, the concept of hiding data inside innocuous media (steganography) becomes a tool for human rights. Just like malware uses a public forum to find a hidden server, digital activists use public platforms to hide data. For example, activists have hidden the coordinate keys for secure, underground internet mesh networks inside the metadata of mundane public photos. To an authoritarian firewall, it looks like a citizen posting a picture of a cat; to a democracy activist, it is a map to an uncensored communication line.
fig 2. Raw signal static of a lost signal from the International Space Station (ISS) SSTV transmission:
Steganography #1. While the naked eye sees lines of visual noise, we can actual reverse engineer this image to learn more about its transmission. Such as, The vibrant red, green, and blue specs tell us the decoder software picked up continuous frequency spikes fluctuating wildly between 1500 Hz (the threshold for black pixels) and 2300 Hz (the threshold for pure white pixels).
A raw string of plain text is also known as a cryptographic key, encodes a hidden mesh network coordinate entry which might look like this when extracted:
CONNECT_NODE_ID: 4f89a2b1 // LAT: 34.0522 N // LON: 118.2437 W // PASSKEY: d97a1b6c8f
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The concept of embedding hidden instructions into an image is used in many situations in our modern daily life, from digital watermarking used to protect artists' copyright, as well as the optimization of QR codes, barcodes, or encryptions within microchips (tap-to-pay). The fundamental engineering of SSTV—converting data into unique sound frequencies—is what paved the way for the original telephone modems (the iconic dial-up internet sound).
Today, it is used for "Acoustic Data Transfer." For example, some modern devices use ultrasound frequencies to securely pair devices, transmit data between air-gapped scientific equipment, or process touchless, secure data payments in areas with zero cell service. The technology behind sending a slow, line-by-line image over a heavily distorted, low-bandwidth signal is exactly how humanity received its very first close-up photographs of the Moon and Mars during the early Apollo and Mariner missions. Before high-speed digital arrays existed, space agencies relied heavily on slow-scan principles to ensure that even if 90% of the signal was lost to cosmic static, a recognizable picture would still stitch together on Earth.
fig 3. A video college I created of the famous Apollo 15 Hammer and Feather Drop, which took place on the surface of the Moon. On August 2, 1971, near the end of the final spacewalk of the Apollo 15 mission, Commander David Scottstood before a live television camera on the Moon.
In one hand, he held a standard geology hammer(weighing about 1.3 pounds or 600 grams), and in the other, a falcon feather (weighing only a fraction of an ounce).
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He raised them to the same height and released them simultaneously. In the airless vacuum of the lunar surface, both objects hit the dusty ground at the exact same fraction of a second.
The video clip of David Scott dropping the hammer and feather was beamed back to Earth under severe technology constraints. Just like the SSTV line-by-line raster scans we analyzed, the live TV signal from the Lunar Module on Apollo 15 was restricted by an incredibly narrow bandwidth over deep space.​ The video came through at a low frame rate, heavily distorted by deep space cosmic static and raw signal noise.
To see the pure law of gravity, scientists had to strip away the noise of Earth's atmosphere-- a hidden message in isolating a fundamental truth hidden beneath environmental interference; it shows us how much invisible data surrounds us every single day—floating through our living spaces via radio waves, hidden inside the code of everyday websites, or buried beneath the noise of our busy digital lives.
fig 4. Raw signal static of a lost signal from the International Space Station (ISS) SSTV transmission:
Steganography #2. Because the audio frequency is repeating perfectly in time with the line-rendering engine, the pixels stack uniformly. It creates a rigid grid of information out of what was once complete chaos.To the human eye, those vertical ripples look like a physical texture or a solid wave. But they don't actually exist as a "thing." They are simply the visual byproduct of a hidden constraint—a specific mathematical frequency—forcing itself onto the screen.
fig 5. My obsession with clouds comes through from the lens of physics, as if I am seeing Gravity as a system constraint, rendering itself in real-time. To most, this image is a beautiful capturing of altocumulus undulatus clouds. To the human eye, clouds look like random, chaotic puffs of moisture. But if we think of fractals and mathematical constraints existing in the natural world, like the golden ratio, we can see the system for how it rules forces of nature into strict geometric order through a phenomenon called an atmospheric gravity wave. For me, I enjoy seeing clouds for a deeply intuitive reason: they are one of the few places in nature where the invisible, mathematical programming of our simulation drops its camouflage and becomes completely visible to the naked human eye. They show us the invisible walls of fluid dynamics and gravitational boundaries that keep our environment stable.
fig 6. Raw signal static of a lost signal from the International Space Station (ISS) SSTV: Steganography #3.
Missing Line Synchronization: The scan lines are fragmented but still horizontally uniform, this means the receiver was intermittently catching the 24000 Hz sync tone. This tone tells the software to drop down to start a new line. Because it was pulsing unevenly through the static, it created the choppy, stacked block structure you see. Because the audio frequency is repeating perfectly in time with the line-rendering engine, the pixels stack uniformly. It creates a rigid grid of information out of what was once complete chaos. To the human eye, those vertical ripples look like a physical texture or a solid wave. But they don't actually exist as a "thing." They are simply the visual byproduct of a hidden constraint—a specific mathematical frequency—forcing itself onto the screen.
In computing, the user interface (the icons, windows, and mouse pointer on your screen) is a useful illusion. A pixel on your monitor isn't actually a little blue folder; it is an abstraction hiding millions of lines of raw binary code and electrical currents moving through silicon. Prominent cognitive scientists and physicists (like Donald Hoffman) argue that human perception works exactly like a computer desktop.
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Our senses present reality as a world of solid objects, space, and time (the feathers, hammers, and even white cube art galleries). In reality, space and time might just be the interface. The "solid" objects we see are just icons designed to keep us safe and functioning within the system, hiding the immense, incomprehensible data structure running underneath. See project Holomovement to read more on this topic.
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One of the most mind-bending theories in modern theoretical physics is the Holographic Principle, which comes out of studying black holes. This principle suggests that our entire three-dimensional reality—everything we see, feel, and experience—is actually a projection originating from a flat, two-dimensional boundary surrounding the universe. This means all the data required to create you, the room you are sitting in, and the gravity keeping you on the floor is encoded in microscopic binary-like bits on a distant 2D surface. We are living inside the decoded projection. It is the ultimate cosmic version of steganography: a massive amount of complex data hidden inside a flat, unassuming surface.
fig 7. A image capturing a live performance of a sound installation I created for a group exhibition called "Overnight Sound" at Mercury Projects, San Antonio, TX 2020 — Curated by Pamela Martinez. In 2018, I became enthralled by Jason Hafner’s talk on Plasmonics at Rice University, at how light interacts with matter at a fundamental level.
In plasmonics studies, how light (photons) interacts with metallic nanostructures to create "surface plasmons"—which are essentially concentrated, localized waves of electrons trapped, squeezed, and guided along a surface. The boundary forces the light to change its behavior entirely. In this installation, by splitting the space, projecting light across a physical gap, and letting it wash over suspended, translucent fabric panels, my installation captured the friction between a structured signal and physical boundaries, which mimic mimics the structural data anomalies and "system constraints" I have been mapping out across SSTV scans and cloud observations.
In our reality, gravity and the speed of light act as the ultimate system constraints. They ensure that cause and effect remain stable, preventing us from "breaking the rendering engine." When David Scott dropped that hammer and feather on the Moon, he was demonstrated that the system rules are perfectly uniform, even when you change the rendering environment from Earth to space. In this view, does this "illusionary box" keep us safe, or is it a limitation? Are we are supposed to figure out how to decode past this "veil"?
We could look at how physicists use quantum mechanics to try and peak behind this visual interface, or how CERN in Switzerland treats their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) when physicists discovered the Higgs boson. So if the universe is a simulation, things like the Higgs field, gravity, and the speed of light are masterful creations, almost like cosmic safeguards that we've seen throughout artist creations, and historic documents that depicts an Invisible Projector Dome around our perceived reality. By locking the universe into a strict set of rules where mass is limited and information cannot travel faster than light, the "creator" ensures that the simulation doesn't crash. A machine that is trying to remember by mimicking consciousness based purely on "data" rather than biological evolution: "asking someone who has never seen a dog to draw one based entirely on a description."
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"Every day I go in there... I map out areas to the best of my ability. And more and more I'm convinced that nothing in our lifetime... means more than this. But I don't understand. I can't even describe it."
fig 8. A image capturing a installation view of a sculpture titled, Expressions of Iron
Video monitors, digital video feed, custom hanging structure, suspension cables, tensioning hardware, steel mounting brackets, boulder and natural stones, various custom cables, soil substrate, architectural wall interventions (wall-mounted), video playback system
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Approx. 96" × 72" x 72" (dimensions can be adjusted to your precise install)