Daata Talks presents: LUNAR ANALOGUES with NASA

2021-01-27 00:00:00

A Daata discussion between artist Marco Brambilla and Ernie Wright (NASA), moderated by Dr. Michelle Thaller (NASA). WATCH <a href="https://vimeo.com/509392647">HERE</a> LUNAR ANALOGUES discussed artist Marco Brambilla’s new editions for Daata, Lunar Atlas, 2017 and Apollo (Ignition), 2015, and their connection to NASA’s lunar orbiter image archive. In the early 1960s, as part of their effort to identify potential landing sites on the moon, NASA sent orbiting spacecraft to survey the lunar surface. In an ingenious solution to the technology limitations of the day, the Lunar Orbiter project used a unique combination of analog and digital imaging. The orbiters documented the moonscape below them with 70 mm film, which was developed onboard, scanned, and then sent to earth via a television signal. This blending of analogue and digital, balanced on the cusp of a new technology, fascinated artist Marco Brambilla, who worked with NASA to digitise these de-archived photos as part of NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP). Reassembling hundreds of analogue images to create a seamless series of lunar panoramas, they were in turn animated to simulate the trajectory of the original orbiters as a virtual flyover. This conversation brings Brambilla together with senior NASA data visualiser Ernie Wright, a world expert on lunar imagery of the past and present. Panel: Marco Brambilla is a video installation artist based in London, UK. His work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum, (New York) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art amongst others. Brambilla has developed public art installations in collaboration with Creative Time and Art Production Fund in New York and his work has been featured at the Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival, as well as Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland. He is a recipient of the Tiffany Comfort Foundation and Tiffany Colbert Foundation awards. Ernie Wright is a Senior Visualiser. Wright has been a programmer and animator in NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualisation Studio since 2008, working primarily with data from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. He is also a subject matter expert on eclipse calculation and mapping and a frequent speaker on LRO, Apollo, and the Moon. Dr. Michelle Thaller (moderator) is an Astrophysicist and Science Communicator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She is the co-host of the Science Channel’s How the Universe Works and has appeared on numerous television programs and podcasts. Lunar Atlas and Apollo (Ignition) by Marco Brambilla is now available on daata.art.