Марс (Mars), 1968
Before being ideas, scientific theories are themselves constituted by image making. With computer-generated imagery, it has become increasingly difficult to recognize the indexicality of the film image, mainly because of simulation. In the case of scientific films, this issue is even more delicate, as the image requires a direct recognition of reality, under penalty of not constituting scientific evidence. With increasingly aestheticized images, scientific images in turn are captured from distant spaces, through sophisticated hybrid technologies, very different from the optical array images of telescopes. This exhibition intends to present an overview of films considered scientific, with educational intentions on astronomy since before the invention of cinema, so that the most diverse film techniques used by filmmakers and scientists in different eras can be appreciated.
The program will be followed by a panel with Jane de Almeida, Lilly Husbands, Eames Demetrios, and Brian Jacobson in person, and filmmakers Derek Jenkins, Anna Sigrithur & Joel Penner on Zoom.
A free dinner will be available after the panel!
Curated by Jane de Almeida, Adam Hyman, Jheanelle Brown.
SCREENING
Passage artificiel de Vénus sur le Soleil
Pierre Jules César Janssen, France/Japan, 1874, digital, b/w, silent, 0:30
Road to the Stars (Дорога к звёздам)
Pavel Klushantsev, Russia, 1957, digital transfer, color, sound, 25 min.
Flammes du soleil
By Bernard Lyot, 1935 with added commentary by Paul Couderc, 1957, b&w, sound, 11:00
Film made in memory of Bernard Lyot, astronomer, member of the Academy of Sciences and inventor of the coronagraph.
Paul Couderc, astronomer at the Paris Observatory, comments on the images that Bernard Lyot made in 1935. Lyot invented the coronagraph which allowed filming of the sun, the solar corona, the protuberances and the columns of gas on the surface of the sun.
The Powers of Ten
Charles and Ray Eames, USA, 1977, digital, color, sound, 9:00
Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe (1977) is a film created by the Eames Office investigating the idea of an exponential series. The film illustrates scale and the significance of adding a zero to a number. It begins with a scene on Earth: a man and woman picnicking in a park bordering Lake Michigan in Chicago. The journey unfolds as the camera steadily moves away from the couple, reaching the edge of the known universe. The camera reverses its movement back to Earth’s park scene, going further to reach the atomic level of the hand of the napping man on the picnic blanket. Original music score by Elmer Bernstein.
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage
Excerpt from Episode 11 “Persistence of Memory”.
Carl Sagan/Ann Druryan, USA, 1980, digital, color, sound, 10 min.
Cosmic Cycles 5: Planetary Fantasia
2023, color, sound, 12:36, excerpt from "Cosmic Cycles 5: Planetary Fantasia"
Courtesy NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Producers: James Tralie (ADNET Systems, Inc.), Wade Sisler (NASA/GSFC)
Editor: James Tralie
Music composer: Henry Dehlinger (National Philharmonic)
Music credit: “Planetary Fantasia" from Cosmic Cycles: A Space Symphony by Henry Dehlinger. Courtesy of the composer.
Earth’s siblings, the other planets were created at the birth of the solar system. They give us a glimpse of the variety possible in the universe and how rare Earth is. As we explore these other worlds, we fuel our adventurous spirit and discover new wonders at every turn: riverbeds on Mars, volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io, auroras on Saturn, and sulfuric-acid clouds on Venus.
Venus Transit 2012 Composited Visuals
Tom Bridgman, 2012, digital, color, silent, 3 min.
Visualizations by: Tom Bridgman / NASA
(2nd, 3rd, and 5th views)
A high-cadence view of Venus Transit in AIA 171 angstroms. 38 seconds
A high-cadence view of Venus Transit in HMI. 1:06
A high-cadence view of Venus Transit in AIA at 304 angstroms 37 seconds
Composited Full Disk frames, constructed by compositing the HMI high-cadence inset with the low cadence full-resolution disk. 1:06
Composited Full Disk frames, constructed by compositing the AIA 171 high-cadence inset with the low cadence full-resolution disk. 38 seconds
Jane de Almeida is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of arts, film, and new media, with a focus on subjectivity and perception. Her international academic career includes positions as Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy at Boston College, Visiting Fellow in the Department of Architecture and History of Art at Harvard University, and guest researcher at MediaLabMadrid. She further expanded her research as a Visiting Professor in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego, where she also served as artist-in-residence at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, developing the project Loga: Mars Projections. Currently, de Almeida is a professor in the Arts Department at the Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil, while coordinating the Laboratory of Scientific Image (LIC) at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Her curatorial work spans exhibitions including "Harun Farocki: Programming the Visible" at Paço das Artes, "Off the Radar" at the Visual Arts Gallery at UC San Diego, "Ulla, Ulla, Martians, Intergalactics and Aliens" at Casanova, “Black Zero: Aldo Tambellini” at Casanova and Museum of Modern Art (MAM) of São Paulo, and "Quantum Art" at FILE. She also curated the exhibition "Ordering and Vertigo," which was showcased at the Cultural Center Bank of Brazil (CCBB) across multiple locations including Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and São Paulo.
Brian Jacobson is Professor of Visual Culture at the California Institute of Technology and Director of the Caltech-Huntington Program in Visual Culture. He is the author of The Cinema of Extractions: Film Materials and Their Forms (Columbia, 2025) and Studios Before the System: Architecture, Technology, and the Emergence of Cinematic Space (Columbia, 2015) and has edited the multi-award-winning book, In the Studio: Visual Creation and Its Material Environments (California, 2020), and “Media Climates,” the Winter 2022 issue of Representations.
Eames Demetrios works in the areas of design, art, filmmaking and storytelling. In the design world, Demetrios is probably best known as director of the Eames Office, taking care of the legacy of designers Charles and Ray Eames for almost three decades. In this capacity,and working with his siblings, he has organized and curated numerous exhibitions, stewarded the re-editions of the Eames Furniture with Herman Miller and Vitra, and created an interactive version of the classic Eames film Powers of Ten. In addition, Demetrios is Chairman of the Board of the Eames Foundation, which takes care of the remarkable Eames House.
Demetrios is a writer as well: he’s the author or co-author of a dozen books and contributor to many more. His current large scale art work is his parallel universe, Kcymaerxthaere, a global work of multivalent storytelling, telling stories through the physicality of the world. For this project he has, over the past 20 years, installed 157 public installation in 30 countries on 6 continents in 31 languages. Demetrios describes it as a global sculpture made out of narrative. Demetrios continues to do some filmmaking, having made over 70 films (mostly short documentaries, but some fiction features and animation)--many on the Eames work, as well as exploring topics ranging from the Modern Maya of southern Mexico to Frank Gehry, from homelessness to legendary winemaker Peter Gago.
Additional panelists:
Lilly Husbands is a lecturer in Animation and Visual Culture at Middlesex University. Her research is broadly concerned with the legacy and evolution of experimental animation in the context of contemporary multimedia practice. She has published numerous book chapters and articles on experimental animation in journals such as Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), Frames Cinema Journal and Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. She is the co-editor of the book Experimental Animation: From Analogue to Digital (London: Routledge, 2019). She is an associate editor of Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal.
Derek Jenkins (Canada/USA) is a motion picture photographer born in Monroe, Louisiana in 1980. His practice is handmade, personal, and documentary—sometimes all at once. His films have been exhibited at festivals, museums, and galleries, including DocLisboa, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, McMaster Museum of Art, Antimatter Film Festival, the8fest, FRACTO Experimental Film Encounter, Media City Film Festival, Mimesis Documentary Festival, non-syntax Experimental Image Festival, Microscope Gallery, and Prismatic Ground, among many others. Previously a technician at Niagara Custom Lab, he is Executive Director of Hamilton Artists Inc., founder of Dandelion Film Collective, and board chair at the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. He lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario.
Anna Sigrithur is a writer and artist whose work explores language, sensory perception and human/non-human relationships.
Joel Penner is a filmmaker who uses scanners, microscopes and cameras to create time lapses of plants and fungi growing and decaying, with the goal of inspiring people to see the beauty of everyday existence.