MCP501 Proposal Year 1

MCP501 Proposal Year 1

01 Title- 

Temporal and spacial simultaneities manifested in the landscape surrounding astronomical observatories in remote locations. 

04 Description of proposed project or body of work - practical element

I will produce experimental video, a set of photographic images and an online journal. As well of a series of sculptures based on data obtained from astronomical observations. 

I will document the astronomical sites using video and audio using a first-person observation strategy that will allow me to experience technology, nature and the social surroundings in these remote places as an integrated landscape that will render conceptually strong, contemplative, poetic and visually compelling artworks. With the information obtained from astronomic observations, I will produce a series of sculptures that will materialize the huge temporal and spatial gaps in the Universe enhanced by astronomical observations. Celestial bodies seen by this instruments are located millions of years away, both in distance and in time.

05 Description of project report or thesis - written element

I will present a written thesis that will try to establish the poetic nature of the temporal and spacial simultaneities reflected on the landscape surrounding astronomical observatories in remote locations.

It will provide the context needed to understand the artworks developed and will document the process of creating the artwork.

It will elaborate on the resources, techniques and language (e.g Cinematographic) chosen to realize the works. I will describe how observations made by the scientific community pose poetic simultaneities that resonate with philosophy and History

06 Anticipated results

An experimental film, several sculptures and possibly some paintings. A journal.

07 Initial bibliography

– Pfaffenberger, Bryan. "Social Anthropology of Technology." Annual Review of Anthropology 21.1 (1992): 491-516.

– Barros, Alonso. “Pachamama y desarrollo: paisajes conflictivos en el Desierto de Atacama”. Estudios Atacameñios 13 (1997): 75-94

– McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium is the Massage”. 1964

– Encounters at the End of the World. Dir. Werner Herzog. THINKFilm, 2008. Film

–Nostalgia for the Light. Dir. Patricio Guzmán, 2010. Film

– Chapela, Emilio. The space around. Documental research about ruins of technology in connection to Bell Laboratories in NJ. https://vimeo.com/166038794 Password: space

08 Research statement, question

I am interested in exploring the poetical simultaneities of time and space manifested in the landscape surrounding astronomical observatories. And by the observations themselves. Can observatories be thought as Cosmological Machines? Extensions of ourselves to exercise philosophy and History?

09 Formulae entire project in 2-3 meaningful sentences

Production of an experimental video, new media works and sculptures that explore the interconnections, dissociations and contradictions rendered from the interaction of technology, information, nature and society around highly specialized and remote astronomical sites above 16,000 feet above the sea level in Mexico and Chile. 

I will document the astronomical sites using video and audio using a first-person observation strategy that will allow me to experience technology, nature and the social surroundings in these remote places as an integrated landscape that evidences the huge temporal and spatial gaps in the Universe enhanced by astronomical observations. Celestial bodies seen by this instruments are located millions of years away, both in distance and in time. 

Simultaneously, I will produce sculptures based on the fossilized light coming from the Universe (and picked by these observatories) to enrich the temporal simultaneities manifested by our interaction with these instruments.

10D How will this research support your creative project or practice

It will help me to define how to approach the situation, the places, the people and nature around the observatories. I will help me develop the cinematographic language to use. And how to perform interviews (if any) or under what guidelines music or audio design should be composed.