Remote Viewing
Posted: May 27th, 2008 | Filed under: Modern / Not Modern |
(Link from NASA post here. It’s a University website, not a government site, but I’ll save that for another post.)
People are psyched about this image, a photograph of a Mars lander probe, shot from a second orbiting probe.
The probe and parachute are legible here, but only just. It’s a poor image, informationally and compositionally speaking. So the excitement about it is all the more intriguing.
“I’m floored. I’m absolutely floored,” said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Principal Investigator Alfred McEwen said, “We’ve never taken an image at such an oblique angle before.”
“One word: Whoah.” was all they wrote over at the Planetary Society, under the blog post OMG!! Parachute!!!! Photo!!!!!.
The folks I love to not love over at Boingboing said, “How badass awesome is it to be a human? Super badass awesome.”
Then there is the post at Bad Astronomy, where the comments are as worth reading as the post. The poster wrote:
Think on this, and think on it carefully: you are seeing a manmade object falling gracefully and with intent to the surface of an alien world, as seen by another manmade object already circling that world, both of them acting robotically, and both of them hundreds of million of kilometers away.
Never, ever forget: we did this. This is what we can do.
So what’s different here from our other interplanetary pictures? If I was immune to the attraction, I wouldn’t take the trouble to reflect a little here. But a powerful image always makes me curious to understand more what’s happening.
It’s twice the probe, and twice the presence. This image verifies not only that “we” put a machine on another planet, but that we put two machines on, or in orbit around, another planet. If one is prone to fist-pumping over demonstrations of human prowess , brilliance, and ability, then here one gets twice the punch.
The image reproduces, through the clear depiction of a parachute and probe, the many “artist’s renderings” and simulations that sell people on the idea of supporting such an effort. The inadequacy of such models, which strive hard to seem more real all the time, is always felt. Maybe the joy over seeing the “real thing” is in part exaggerated because of all those models? This might explain the “it looks like a movie” reaction.
There’s always a bit of doubt involved in interplanetary exploration. Images shot from probes on distant landscapes look like they could be from our own landscape - this is both reassuring, and damaging to the efficacy of the image. Conspiracy theories on the faked moon landing depend on this. So this image does something, even in its poor resolution, to assuage this doubt. Missions to the Moon gained verity from the images of the Earth photographed over the lunar landscape. As if to say, “See? We’re really here - we can look back at you and see you from here.” This image of the lander is different - it says “See? We really did it. Here’s a picture of us doing it.”
Then there’s the joy, the pleasure, the power, of the document. Skateboarders videotape their efforts not only to prove their prowess and elusive feats, but because they want to see themselves from another person’s eyes. The objective self-view is even better than the reflected view. If Narcissus revels in the closed loop of the pool and self, incorporating the pool into the self, the self-document goes a step further. It achieves confidence for the self through the verity of another’s gaze, but then is only interested in that gaze for the purposes of self-verification. Like Agent Smith in The Matrix, popping up in any person he wishes, the person who delights in self-documentation places all perspectives in the service of his own. He speaks of himself in the third person, not out of humility (”Your subject wishes you peace and long life, dear King.”) but out of a colonizing approach to other views. (This is why it makes sense that Tolkein’s character Gollum speaks of himself in the third person.)
This image, then, attractive and seductive as it is for someone who can identify with the “we” that it depicts, is not nearly as beautiful as any of these new images from the Phoenix lander. These new views of Mars thrill me differently. The doubt about their verity persists, but that’s OK, I don’t have to have proof all the time to believe that another landscape as large as this one exists out there in space. But to know that there are rocks in that world, a horizon in that world, a rise in the distance, a particular composition of shadows, a fall away of contoured dirt into another mound of soil - these are the specifics that are both wonderfully self-sufficiently real, and also promising of others. The new views of Mars from Phoenix are beautiful because they show us another landscape, but also because they remind us of how many OTHERS there are, that we don’t see, but that are just as real anyway.
If anything, if I need some reflexivity in my interplanetary photography, I’ll take an image like this one. The shadow of the camera, cast on extra-terrestrial soil, provides an opportunity for some self-congratulations, but that depend on the greater power of a sun, at a particular angle, raking light around my cold metal frame to illuminate the sands I want to see, and to obscure the ones I block.
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