TY - BOOK

T1 - Picture the Sky

T2 - Cosmic Code, Images and Imaginaries

AU - Buhl, Nanna Debois

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - This practice-based artistic research projectPicture the Sky: Cosmic Code, Images, and Imaginaries explores depictions and investigations of space in the overlap of scientific, aesthetic, and speculative realms, in order to rethink well known histories of space travel, computation, art, and astronomy to nurture more complex historical and material textures.A central strand of the project is to consider the image as a tool to map and tospeculate with. Via scientific solar photographs, historical spectrograms,speculative artistic celestographs, and computer-generated astronomicalmodels, I investigate how visual perceptions of the cosmos have influencedour worldviews over the past centuries. I address how art and science func-tion as categories and knowledge systems, but I operate in a space wherethe borders between art, science, and speculation overlap in fuzzy ways.Theoretically, the project combines new materialist thinking (Bennett, Marks,Monteiro, Plant), with theories of media ecology and media archeology (Full-er, Parikka, Galloway, Rahm and Skågeby), feminist science and technol-ogy studies (Haraway, Hayles, Barad, van der Tuin, Le Guin, Zylinska) andglitch feminism (Laboria Cuboniks, Russel, Menkman).Through making and reflecting upon images, I set the following questionsin orbit: How can we become more attentive to the complexities of historyif we look at the work and people that were omitted from traditional narra-tives of astronomy and space travel? How can we, through studies of theirphotography, coding, and weaving, conceive of new ways of thinking aboutrelationships between art, craft, and science; between the analog and thedigital? And how can we, through these images and objects that make theworld visible in new ways, imagine different futures?I examine these questions through three investigations that interweave his-torical references, artistic experiments, and new scientific studies:I MOON MEMORYThrough the intricately woven copper threads that made up the Apollo 11 moon landing programming and through my own coding and weaving experiments, I present a lunar landing history that encompasses a wider range of actors than usual and explore the overlapping logics and narratives of looms and computers.II VISIBLE INVISIBLEI study the grainy surfaces of hundred-year-old photographs created by astronomical pioneers to examine human-machine interactions and mechanisms of visibility and invisibility. I dwell on the presence of ghosts in the machines and reflect on the ethereal aspects of image making.III PARTICLES AND PLANETSBy bringing together an odd couple—a 19th-century mystic and a contemporary astrophysicist—I come into physical contact with cosmic matter and draw connections across time to contaminate narrow categories of “Earth” and “sky,” “feminine” and “masculine,” “scientific” and “artistic,” “rational” and “speculative.”The project culminates in a dissertation in the form of an artist’s book, a soloexhibition at Kunsthal Aarhus which contains photographs, films, weavings,installations, and algorithm-based works, as well as a public commissionat the Steno Diabetes Center, Aarhus University Hospital. The project thuscombines a production of artworks, a thinking through them, and a meta-re-flection on what their materials and technologies signify (at different times).

AB - This practice-based artistic research projectPicture the Sky: Cosmic Code, Images, and Imaginaries explores depictions and investigations of space in the overlap of scientific, aesthetic, and speculative realms, in order to rethink well known histories of space travel, computation, art, and astronomy to nurture more complex historical and material textures.A central strand of the project is to consider the image as a tool to map and tospeculate with. Via scientific solar photographs, historical spectrograms,speculative artistic celestographs, and computer-generated astronomicalmodels, I investigate how visual perceptions of the cosmos have influencedour worldviews over the past centuries. I address how art and science func-tion as categories and knowledge systems, but I operate in a space wherethe borders between art, science, and speculation overlap in fuzzy ways.Theoretically, the project combines new materialist thinking (Bennett, Marks,Monteiro, Plant), with theories of media ecology and media archeology (Full-er, Parikka, Galloway, Rahm and Skågeby), feminist science and technol-ogy studies (Haraway, Hayles, Barad, van der Tuin, Le Guin, Zylinska) andglitch feminism (Laboria Cuboniks, Russel, Menkman).Through making and reflecting upon images, I set the following questionsin orbit: How can we become more attentive to the complexities of historyif we look at the work and people that were omitted from traditional narra-tives of astronomy and space travel? How can we, through studies of theirphotography, coding, and weaving, conceive of new ways of thinking aboutrelationships between art, craft, and science; between the analog and thedigital? And how can we, through these images and objects that make theworld visible in new ways, imagine different futures?I examine these questions through three investigations that interweave his-torical references, artistic experiments, and new scientific studies:I MOON MEMORYThrough the intricately woven copper threads that made up the Apollo 11 moon landing programming and through my own coding and weaving experiments, I present a lunar landing history that encompasses a wider range of actors than usual and explore the overlapping logics and narratives of looms and computers.II VISIBLE INVISIBLEI study the grainy surfaces of hundred-year-old photographs created by astronomical pioneers to examine human-machine interactions and mechanisms of visibility and invisibility. I dwell on the presence of ghosts in the machines and reflect on the ethereal aspects of image making.III PARTICLES AND PLANETSBy bringing together an odd couple—a 19th-century mystic and a contemporary astrophysicist—I come into physical contact with cosmic matter and draw connections across time to contaminate narrow categories of “Earth” and “sky,” “feminine” and “masculine,” “scientific” and “artistic,” “rational” and “speculative.”The project culminates in a dissertation in the form of an artist’s book, a soloexhibition at Kunsthal Aarhus which contains photographs, films, weavings,installations, and algorithm-based works, as well as a public commissionat the Steno Diabetes Center, Aarhus University Hospital. The project thuscombines a production of artworks, a thinking through them, and a meta-re-flection on what their materials and technologies signify (at different times).

M3 - Ph.D. thesis

BT - Picture the Sky

PB - Københavns Universitet

CY - København

ER -