PALE BLUE DOT: AKA - EARTH

Pale Blue Dot AKA: Earth Oil on canvas 90 x 100 cm 2017

Carl Sagan's description of Earth as a 'pale blue dot' was coined after seeing the photograph Voyager 1 took as it left the solar system, February 1990. On Sagan's suggestion the spacecraft's camera was turned back towards Earth. The image of Earth, identifiable as a pale blue dot, set among a myriad of other celestial entities had, and still has, a profound affect on people. The colour blue indicates an environment that can sustain life. Voyager 1's camera was turned off not long after the famous image was taken, to enable scientists to re-purpose computers. Sagan wrote a book called Pale Blue Dot in 1994. Voyager 1 is still travelling in interstellar space. Please visit this NASA website for more information.  

In Pale Blue Dot: AKA Earth I have played with a scoping type perspective. It feels like Voyager 1 is falling back to Earth, maybe? Or, perhaps that we have been catapulted at speed away from Earth. The red flames around the pale blue dot, could represent the increasingly volatile nature of Earth's existence. They could also indicate some kind of renewal?

Regular readers will identify my play with a surveillance-like perspective, mimicking but also extending that of a militarised drone, a recurrent figure in some of my other recent paintings. Clearly, you and I, are well above or beyond the current reach of drones. Our 'surveillance' is far more sophisticated - it embraces imagination! The cosmic perspective 'reveals' the fiery threat-potential around Earth. Cosmologists, such as Lord Martin Rees suggest, that like at no other time in human history, the decisions we make now will affect whether life on Earth continues into the next centuries. A cosmic perspective reveals the kind of metaphoric precipice we now hover upon.

Cheers,
Kathryn
P.S. Please read another recent post Anomaly Detection with more paintings that represent the 'pale blue dot'

ANOMALY DETECTION (NUMBER 2)

Anomaly Detection (Number 2) Oil on linen 120 x 180 cm 2017

The term 'anomaly detection' is a technical one. With contemporary technology and the help of algorithms and artificial intelligence, systems have been devised to detect unusual online behaviours, discrepancies in documentation, weaknesses in cyber systems, and unusual patterns in things like financial transactions and movements of people etc. Anomaly detection enables, in many cases, preemptive action, such as isolating/fixing weaknesses in cyber systems, identifying potentially dangerous activities and malign intent. Anomalies can be detected in image, written and online data that is collected, analysed and stored. 

Where did the idea for Anomaly Detection (Number 2) come from?

The idea came after I saw a drone manufacturer's promotional video that demonstrated anomaly detection capabilities of airborne drones. This is where the drone's wide-area electro-optical surveillance systems can cast such a wide net that, for example, three vehicles travelling at speed and many kilometers apart, could be identified as aiming for the same destination. In the case of war and conflict zones this may indicate that the vehicles are aiming for a target, either to destroy it, deliver insurgents to it, or possibly protect a valuable human asset. The latter, of course, in the eyes of those watching may be considered a high value target - HVT.  

In Anomaly Detection (Number 2) I have turned the surveillance back onto the drones; in this case three weaponised Grey Eagle drones. I am suggesting that imagination can deploy its own wide-area - even cosmic - surveillance capabilities to question whether technologies designed to detect, monitor, surveil and target, are really beneficial for humanity and the planet. In this painting the three drones seem to be aiming for the same destination - the pale blue dot. Here, I am drawing upon Carl Sagan's term for Earth, as it was seen in the famous photograph, 'Pale Blue Dot', taken in February 1990 by the spacecraft Voyager 1 as it started to leave the solar system. The photograph showed Earth as a small pale blue dot situated within and against our celestial environment. The three drones in Anomaly Detection (Number 2) potentially threaten the pale blue dot. 

Anomaly Detection (Number 2) poses a few questions about the vulnerability of humanity and Earth's environment in an age of accelerating technological development. The drones can be seen as literal threats or as metaphors for a society seduced by technology, or exhausted by it. The three drones are painted as if they are pixelated, thus representing their reliance on, and use of, digital and cyber systems. The pixels also suggest a kind of virtual reality, mimicking images seen on computer screens, either those used by drone operators or those used for war games and simulations. There is plenty of room for anomaly detection!

New Sky

The drones are also painted blue to reflect upon the way vertical threat creates a new sky. This is particularly so in places such as Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan where drone operations and attacks have made people fearful of the sky. In an age where Voyager 1 now travels in interstellar space, the fact that people on Earth are afraid of the sky, is an indictment on humanity. 

Dronescape 

Anomaly Detection (Number 2) is another of my dronesscapes, but it is also a cosmic landscape provoking and pushing perspective, of all kinds, beyond Earth, even beyond the solar system - and - possibly this universe!  

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In 2014 I painted Pale Blue Dot [below]

  

 Pale Blue Dot Oil on linen 120 x 160 2014

Anomaly Detection

I recently painted another Anomaly Detection painting [below]. It is a work on paper, depicting three weaponised Reaper drones aiming for the tree-of-life. 

   

Anomaly Detection Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2017

Cheers,

Kathryn

SPACE NET

Space Net Gouache on paper 56 x 76 cm 2017

Space Net is related to another recent painting Code Empire  where I have painted Earth [or another planet?] and its moon with strings of binary code. I have not used binary code in Space Net but I was thinking about signals emanating from Earth into space - and signals emanating from space to Earth. 

AERIALS IN SPACE

In Space Net the circle could be Earth, but it could also be another planet, or it could be the centre of a space ship! The triangulated prongs could be signals or some other kind of technical infrastructure, physical or digital, that enables communication, orientation and surveillance. I painted them to look like the huge aerials my father had built beside our house on our grain farm in the middle of the Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia. These aerials facilitated reception and transmission for my father's HAM radio communication signals. In a sense I've uprooted them and sent them into space! Here in Space Net they represent structure, even if it is unseen; the kind of digital and cyber structures that net our skies, that net the space between Earth and satellites orbiting Earth, and in some cases extending beyond. An example of the latter is Voyager 1, now travelling in interstellar space. It still sends signals that NASA can receive. That's actually quite amazing! Something human beings made is now beyond our solar system...

Space Net conjures a few thoughts - if the circle in Earth, something or someone has us covered! The planet is completely connected and surveilled, cloaked in a net of signals that create unseen avenues for power and control, but by who or what? Has the planet been colonised by the forces of the algorithm, the originators lost in time? Or, is this image a spaceship carrying humanity to its next planetary home? If so, is humanity continuing its urge to colonise or is it escaping an unsustainable Earth? 

AIRBORNE MILITARISED DRONES

As regular readers know, over the last 18 months or so, the figure of the militarised airborne drone has entered my paintings. If I don't depict the actual drone, I paint its signals, to expose their presence, to aestheticise them in ways that draw attention to them. These painted 'signals' are symbolic of the increasing persistence of monitoring, surveillance and scoping of life by remotely operated and increasingly autonomous systems. Space Net can also be read as one of my dronescapes, where drones circle the Earth casting surveillance and ever-ready targeting 'nets' across the planet.

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NET - SURVEILLANCE is an earlier post with 2 paintings where I have exposed a drone's signals.

DRONESCAPES     Please check out my designated DRONESCAPES page. 

Cheers,

Kathryn