Stellar Abstraction: On Craft & Telescopic Vision

The Black Eye Galaxy, quilt by Jimmy McBride, 2010

The line that divides the study of astronomy from pure divination is a thinly constructed one.  In Europe, the science cut its teeth on heresy and witchcraft trials; in the Americas it was the stuff of priests. Little wonder that in the post-Hubble age of digital imaging and democratized technologies it has taken its place in the toolkit of conceptual artists. It is, at root, the diligent pursuit to see what does not, to the “normal” eye, exist. At the same time, the precise methodology required to track, map, and diagram the paths of astral bodies is grounded in the honing of a repetitive and highly mathematical technique. Which is all to say that the telescopic arts are perfectly situated to provide a mirror upon the artistic process itself — specifically, the tense relationship between conceptual abstraction and “craft.”

VORTEX 3 in Sextans (Inactive Signals Intelligence Spacecraft) photograph by Trevor Paglen, 2010

This is a photograph of a defunct American surveillance satellite — a 38m diameter dish designed to collect telephonic communications for the NSA that remains orbiting 36,000 kilometers above the Earth. Subtly, in the middle of the photograph: the detritus of a Russian rocket launch. It’s a photograph by Trevor Paglen, an artist self-described as operating in the tradition of Kepler and Galileo (“Like contemporary reconnaissance satellites, Jupiter’s moons weren’t supposed to ‘exist,’ but were nonetheless there“).

Vortex 3 is the latest in a series of photographs for Paglen’s project The Other Night Sky, in which the artist endeavors to track and photograph a total of 189 classified covert American spacecraft. The process by which Paglen translates this artistic aspiration into physical work is highly technical — more engineer, really, than photographer. He describes it in his artist’s statement:

To develop this body of work, I was assisted by observational data produced by an international network of amateur “satellite observers.” To translate the observational data into a useable form, I spent almost two years working with a team of computer scientists and engineers at the Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology to develop a software model to describe the orbital motion of classified spacecraft. With these tools, I am able to calculate the position and timing of overhead reconnaissance satellite transits and photograph them with telescopes and large-format cameras using a computer-guided mechanical mount. The resultant skyscapes are marked by trails of sunlight reflected from the hulls of obscure spacecraft hurtling through the night.

Let me clarify that Paglen’s work is more than widgets and numbers: The end sum of these calculations is a series of photographs that is lovely when considered according to even the most traditional aesthetic measures of landscape art.

photograph from "The Other Night Sky" by Trevor Paglen, 2008

Paglen’s previous work on “limit-telephotography” was also built upon the crosshairs of concept and craft. “Limit-telephotography involves photographing landscapes that cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The technique employs high powered telescopes whose focal lengths range between 1300mm and 7000mm. At this level of magnification, hidden aspects of the landscape become apparent.” Using these high powered cameras, Paglen set off to document classified military bases in remote parts of the United States — all from outside legally-mandated perimeters. Along the way, he happened to catch some extraordinary rendition being carried out by the U.S. government, leading to his 2006 book Torture Taxi.

Illuminated Hangars, Tonopah Test Range, NV - photograph by Trevor Paglen, shot from distance ~ 18 miles

***
Mensus eram coelos, nunc terrae metior umbras
Mens coelestis erat, corporis umbra iacet.

I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure
Skybound was the mind, earthbound the body rests.

- self-authored epitaph of Johannes Kepler

***

Though he, too, looks skyward for the subject matter of highly technical pieces, artist Jimmy McBride works with an altogether different sort of craft: quilting.  If Paglen has blurred the line between artist and engineer (or artist and investigative reporter) to the point of near indistinction, McBride can be said to have done something similar with conceptual art and “arts and crafts.”  I will confess that I first discovered the guy’s work not in the Oslo Museum of Contemporary Art (where McBride does, in fact, have a piece), but on Etsy, an Internet marketplace for handmade and vintage goods. While searching for pillow shams, I stumbled upon McBride’s sheet sets made of cargo blankets, hand-embroidered with constellations. And then I recognized this dreamscape from my similarly aimless meanderings on NASA’s website:

Eagle Nebula Pillars (M16), image from the Hubble telescope by NASA

Pillars of Creation, quilt by Jimmy McBride

The impressionistic renderings of nebulas, galaxies, and starscapes in McBride’s quilts display impressive skill, to say the least. But his handiwork has a more awe-inspiring aspect to them – one that is communicated, not offset, by the homey trappings of his work. McBride’s quilts awaken the child-me that watched eclipses through pinhole cameras and put glow-in-the-dark constellations on my ceiling, but was also more afraid than she cared to admit that the universe would soon be swallowed up by a black hole. There is something incredibly captivating about the mixture of comfortingly tactile and unsettlingly otherwordly. I want to approach each mosaic-quilt to study the stitches and seams that compose it, then crawl underneath to consider the terrifying enormity that is deep space.