Planet Earth in Outer Space, part 2
by Bill Schaeffer
copyright(c) 2011
William A. Schaeffer
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... a continuation of the same ideas presented in part 1.
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Bill Schaeffer uses Hubble telescope photographs to illustrate the second half of the sound construction "Planet Earth in Outer Space"
In this video, he concentrates on the more unusual, almost abstract images created by the Hubble telescope. The video explores the mathematical, and supersensory, views of the cosmos created by the Hubble telescope to remind us of all the different ways there are to understand reality, and all the different types of information that is available that we might miss being limited to our five senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell.
These images are beautiful photographic art. They evoke impressions of the painting techniques of Cubism, Proceduralism, Abstract Art, Pop Art, Video Art and Abstract Expressionism.
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The sound track, as in part 1, consists of 1) quotes from media celebrities and 2) found audio clips of "sounds from space." The celebrity sound clips are taken from mostly 1950's TV personalities to emphasize the time shift as information travels through space.
Imagine a listening post stationed 50 light years from earth. All the television, radio, and microwave broadcasts from earth, would be fifty years old, and indistinctly mixed with other electromagnetic and radio wave signals from the rest of the Universe.
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Bill made the audio recording first and listened to it for several months before the idea of this series of videos was conceived.
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From "The Stargazers Guide to the Universe" by Robbin Kerrod, Barron's, 2005
"...imagine that we set off on a grand tour of space in an interstellar spaceship that can travel at the speed of light. Leaving Earth, we shoot past the Sun in about 8 minutes. Pluto flashes by after 5 1/2 hours. Then comes journey of more than 4 years to reach Proxima Centauri and its companion stars.
Heading into the heart of our Galaxy, it takes 25,000 years to reach its center, and another 50,000 years to reach its outer edge. More than 160,000 years would go by before we came to our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and 2.5 million years before we reached the Andromeda Galaxy (the most distant object that we can see in the sky with the naked eye).
...After more that 10 billion years [more than twice the age of Planet Earth], we come upon the most remote galaxies astronomers can detect in their telescopes."
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"A picture is worth a thousand words." - Anon
"A video is worth a thousand pictures..." - Wm Schaeffer
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Audio recordings from space by Stephen P. McGreevy at www.auroralchorus.com
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soundtrack now available at www.cdbaby.com/all/was57
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