PART I - Earth Observation from an Art Historical Perspective
Author: Jelena Rakin
“Orbital View” and “Overview Effect”
Until the 20th century, pictures showing the Earth from space were solely the product of their creators’ imagination. Such imaginary flights were very common in the history of images. In the 19th century, the first aerial photographs that showed the Earth from above were created. The French photographer Nadar attached a camera to a balloon and photographed Paris from a bird’s-eye view. In the first half of the 20th century, aerial photography was further developed through images taken from airplanes, which played a central role in reconnaissance flights during the First World War. Aerial images from World War I led to a new perspective on the Earth, a perspective no longer tied to physical seeing and experiencing. Instead, the Earth became perceivable as an image from above. This is true for today’s images as well: owing to the flattening effect of the bird’s eye perspective the photograph of “Minnesota in winter” has a pronounced character of being a two-dimensional image in this regard. This abstracted experience of the earthly landscape highlighted visual features that were not immediately recognizable as such, for example: the similarities between the bombarded earthly war landscape and the photographed lunar craters—referred to as a “lunar effect” after intense bombing during World War I. The contemporary image “Bright night” of nighttime Europe with its glowing cities also encourages comparison between the Earth and the night sky. The image “Eye of the Sahara”, showing the structure of concentric circles in the Maur-Adrar desert in Mauritania, bears similarity to comparable formations on other planets, perceptible in this bird’s-eye view and as concentric circles only as an image.
The technology of war is also responsible for the first photograph of the Earth from space. In 1946, a film camera was attached to a V2 rocket. The images taken at intervals of 1.5 seconds showed the curvature of the Earth, which we now often identify with images of Earth from space. Media historian Peter Weibel referred to this new paradigm of seeing as the “orbital view”. Following the first image of the Earth from space, more images were taken from even more distant viewpoints in the second half of the 20th century. Among the most famous are “Earthrise” from 1968 and “Blue Marble” from 1972, which showed the whole Earth for the first time. With the launch of the International Space Station (ISS) in 1998, humanity began receiving a regular stream of photographs and videos of the Earth from space. These images are often accompanied by the awe-inspiring comments of astronauts on the space station that imply a deep psychological effect of the perception made from an orbital vantage point. The “Overview Effect,” described by Frank White in his 1986 book of the same name, refers to a special emotional and spiritual dimension of experiencing the Earth from space.
Images such as “Impact crater lake”, “Red dots in the Kalahari Desert”, or “Star Dunes” continue to inspire awe and admiration for the Earth. At the same time, they refer, in the contemporary context of space research, to another form of top-down perspective that is no longer exclusively reserved for the Earth. With the help of various space probes, other celestial bodies in our solar system have also been photographed from a bird’s-eye view during flybys, thus extending the paradigm of the top-down view to the boundaries of the solar system. These similarities in perspective are mirrored by matching similarities of the observed phenomena, such as the star-shaped dunes of the eastern Great Erg that are observed not only on Earth but also on Mars.
1970s Gaia Hypothesis and the Living Earth
In the 1970s, biologist Lynn Margulis and chemist and biophysicist James Lovelock first postulated the famous Gaia Hypothesis, which posits that the Earth itself is a type of self-regulating organism. This idea has taken on a central role in thinking about the Earth in the context of various climate debates. Images of the Earth from space—such as “Blue Marble” in 1972 or “Earthrise” in 1968—gain a special significance when they are conceptually situated in this context. The notion of the Earth as a living organism fosters an understanding of its vulnerability, which in turn not only reflects the vulnerability of humanity in general but also each individual human more personally. It is crucial to acknowledge how this form of realization can
emerge through the images and their contextualization. Satellite images of the Earth show perspectives that humans cannot perceive in their terrestrial way of life. Such images then appear as messengers of the larger connections (and the interconnectedness) of life on Earth. This offers a good basis for experiencing the spiritual and sublime dimension of cosmic life. It is a vantage point that often escapes humans in the familiarity of quotidian life, which is tied to the perspectives of cities, streets, and enclosed spaces of workplaces or living rooms. It is as if this alienated view from above simultaneously encourages a much more abstract view of the cosmic conditions of human life. Particularly in satellite images of the Earth, it becomes clear how the same cosmic principles manifest at different spatial scales. In the image “Algal galaxy,” the striking vitality of the green color evokes the idea of organic life on Earth—the minute “algae” come together to form a spirally moving super formation. In comparison, the spiral-shaped algal blooms of Earth, consisting of a multitude of tiny organisms, are in reality much smaller than galaxies that can also appear spiral-shaped.
These images further underscore the idea that life on Earth is unique and valuable: the Rare-Earth Hypothesis, for example, assumes that complex organisms (like those existing on Earth) must be unlikely or rare in the universe. In images like “Algal galaxy” and “Great Bahama Bank”, it is primarily the colors and the forms that symbolize life, as they are synonymous with the Earth—the green of the plants and the blue of the water. When zooming out a bit, as in the image of the “Lunar shadow”, the Earth—Gaia, with all its blue and green hues of cosmic life it hosts—is visible. The relatively small shadow of the moon highlights the intrinsic connection of the Earth with the larger contexts of celestial mechanics. Some media scholars have even attributed an animistic tendency to photographic and filmic recordings—implying that these images not only “capture” life but also possess a vital quality themselves. This concept might help understand the strong conceptual and emotional charge of Earth images and their animistic power. Especially today, within the context of the Anthropocene discourse, various debates advocate such an animistic viewpoint. There is a plea for a worldview in which the phenomena of earthly life—other organisms, landscapes, and forests—are not seen merely as objects and resources but as equal yet distinct forms of life. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, film theorists like Jean Epstein or Germaine Dulac attributed to film and photography (due to their technical foundations) the ability to truly capture life. In contrast to other traditional art forms like painting, which involve a subjective selection of depicted phenomena, film and photography were perceived as having the unique ability to create an autonomously living image. These images were consequently deemed as being only partially influenced by the image authors and were rather perceived as autonomous forms of the physical world they captured.
Fractal Geometry and Ornament
Fractal geometry describes a visual phenomenon that intrigues both artists and scientists. Although the principles of fractal geometry were long understood and applied in disciplines such as ornamental art, they were only named and systematically captured as such in the 20th century by mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot. Mandelbrot’s starting point was the desire to connect mathematics with seeing, living, and feeling, from which he considered it had been separated in its modern form. Fractal geometry is therefore a highly visual form of understanding. More specifically, fractal geometry is concerned with the self-similarity of forms that vary and repeat at different scales. Examples of concepts from fractal geometry in nature can be found in both organic and inorganic phenomena, in biology as well as in geology, in the branching of plant leaves, tree branches, the human lung, and coastal formations. The images “Snow Melt in the Alps” and “Sundarbans mangrove forest” remind us of the visual phenomena of fractal geometry using geological formations that were the starting point for Mandelbrot’s research. The intense red in the image “Sundarbans mangrove forest”, showing the mangrove forests in Asia, appears distinctly more abstract, ornamental, and decorative compared to “Snow Melt in the Alps”. This impression is reinforced by the “false color” red. Even though this is not an example from fine art, one becomes aware of the artistic principles that ornament relies on: the simple pleasure in visually tracing lines with one’s eyes, an experience that art historian Ernst Gombrich identified as an affinity of human perception. This affinity is at the core of the aesthetic appeal of the ornamental art. A similar understanding informs the distinction between the “drive for ornamentation” and the “drive for figurative representation”, as highlighted by film theorist Rudolf Arnheim in his reflections on the image. The appeal of images like “Snow Melt in the Alps” or “Sundarbans mangrove forest” lies in their dual character: they appear as ornamental surfaces while simultaneously displaying parts of the concrete physical world. Even though a similar dual character can be generally claimed for the images in this exhibition, fractal geometry additionally draws attention to the interconnectedness of all forms of cosmic life and being. Thus, in these and various other images, viewers recognize that this interconnectedness exists not only on a physical and chemical level but also on the level of aesthetic beauty.
INTRODUCTION: The Aesthetics of Wonder
PART II: Art Historical Contextualization of Images in Astrophysics
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