To Shake a Flower: Interstellar Topographies M87
Che tu non puoi agitare un fiore senza disturbare una stella -Emily Jacir
On April 10, 2019, in coordinated press conferences around the world, researchers from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) revealed the first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow. The gravitational collapse, or inward fall, that culminates in a black hole begins after the "death" of a star; "death" being understood as the complete exhaustion of its energy. Since Einstein predicted its behavior in his theory of gravity, astrophysicists have found overwhelming evidence confirming its existence, but only with the help of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a planet-wide array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration, has it been possible to capture an image for the first time of a black hole at the center of M87, a galaxy 54 million light-years away. Satellites, radio telescopes, and radars, for example, allow us to experience the cosmos with our senses without compromising the validity of the data. Through these instruments that operate as extensions or prostheses of the senses, perceptual information is graphically represented and made public to become scientific or artistic content in our case. By adopting and adapting the scientific method to the artistic process, our intention is to amplify a shared tendency toward curiosity and a sense of wonder that drives both fields. In the words of late astrophysicist and poet Rebecca Elson: “a responsibility to awe.”
Resuming an artistic investigation that proposes artworks as tools of perception, M87 presents the second phase of fabrication of the Interstellar Topographies project, where astronomical data collected by observatories and radio telescopes around the world is translated into sculptures. Using 3D modeling, 3D printing, and CNC routing technologies, the series comprises large-format haptic (tactile) sculptures based on 3D models developed in collaboration with scientists from NASA's Chandra X-ray Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI). These sculptures physically represent and modulate interstellar phenomena such as black holes and supernovae in three dimensions, allowing them to be perceived through touch rather than sight. By generating large-scale replicas of these 3D models and using them as playground objects, sitting sculptures or bouldering blocks, the series is intended to be inhabited and tactilely experienced by the viewer (now turned into a dweller) accentuating their bodily awareness by physically perceiving the wonders of the cosmos without prioritizing vision. The first large-format haptic sculpture in the series is based on several physicalized models of the first image of the black hole M87. The final form results in a smooth topography, a kind of mountain with a hollow center, like a volcano. This is because the initial photograph shows a "halo" or bright aureole with a black center emerging from a black background. Several 3D modeling and 3D printing programs translate the darkness or brightness of an image into concave or convex areas, respectively. This results in the brightest areas of the image “rising” while the dark areas remain flat. The sensual surfaces of this abstract formation blur the line between abstraction and representation. While it evokes the forms and curves of Jean Arp, Noguchi, or Zilia Sánchez, this sculpture nevertheless abandons the romantic (and perhaps overly human) notion of the artist as creator; there is no human trace in its making. At once form and content, the sinuous contours of M87 delineate precise data captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), like an intergalactic readymade.
If we think of a radio telescope as an extension of the ear for listening to the universe, with the collapse of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico we have lost a vital organ of planetary perception. In a country where one of the world's most important radio telescopes was allowed to collapse due to lack of maintenance and state and institutional neglect, producing art based precisely on data compiled in part by the Observatory itself should not be interpreted merely as a requiem or lament, but as an affirmation of a creative will that rejects the hackneyed concept of "resilience" to give way to a broader and more radical imagination than the creative victimhood fostered by the American art establishment, for example.
The exhibition at San Juan 721 stems largely from our interest in the poetic potential of the work of Wanda Díaz-Merced, a blind Puerto Rican astrophysicist recently appointed director of the Arecibo C3 (former Arecibo Observatory), known for her role in the field of space data sonification. From Pythagoras's ancient theory of the music of the spheres, where the cosmos is governed by harmonious numerical and musical proportions, to Wanda's sonifications that employ sonic resources instead of optical technology to "hear the stars," the idea of listening to the cosmos appears as a constant human fascination. In keeping with this aural key, an infrasonic soundtrack accompanies the exhibition. Edited by the artist Rebecca Adorno, who reinterprets NASA's sonifications of black holes, we reproduce only its low vibrations in the gallery so that its effect is undulating and vibratory, physical rather than auditory. Unfolding the full range of the senses, the exhibition brings together not only visual, tactile and auditory material, but also appeals to smell and taste.
Ethyl formate, the substance that gives raspberries their flavor and whose scent is similar to rum, has been found at the center of our galaxy, where a black hole, Sagittarius A*, also resides. In collaboration with Chaveli Sifre, we recreated this scent to infuse the exhibition with the fragrance from the center of the Milky Way. Subtly nuancing the space between the objects in the exhibition, Adorno and Sifre's sound and olfactory interventions stimulate our bodily perception, enveloping us in an atmosphere of sensuality that prepares us to contemplate Zilia Sánchez's erotic "topology," around whose axis the exhibition orbits. Like stirring flowers that, like stars, bloom only at night, this exhibition infuses its scent and cosmic canticle like a multisensory poem, like an ode to the five senses.
Guillermo Rodríguez