A conversation about the speculative intersection between astronomy, art, and time featuring artist-in-residence Rosa Barba and Heidi Newberg, professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy at Rensselaer.

Rosa Barba’s publications, sculpture, and installation work are rooted in the material of cinema. In 2010, she won the Nam June Paik Award for Coro Spezzato, The Future Lasts One Day (2009), based on a multi-choral performance in which each member of the choir is represented by an individual film projector displaying the sung text. Her work has been presented in exhibitions worldwide. 

Heidi Newberg has worked in many areas of astronomy over the course of her career. A fellow of the American Physical Society, and professor of physics, applied physics, and astronomy at Rensselaer, Newberg’s research is primarily related to understanding the structure and evolution of our own galaxy, using stars as tracers of the galactic halo and disks. These stars, in turn, are used to trace the density distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way. 

Newberg did her PhD with the Berkeley Automated Supernova Search, and the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP), and she shared the Gruber Cosmology Prize for her work with SCP. She has helped to build the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which imaged ~10,000 square degrees of the sky in five optical filters, and obtained over a million spectra of galaxies. She initiated the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) project in SDSS II, which obtained spectra for 250,000 galactic stars. 

She has published papers in diverse areas of galactic and extragalactic astronomy, including supernova phenomenology, measuring cosmological parameters from supernovae, galaxy photometry, color selection of QSOs, properties of stars, astronomy education, and the structure of our galaxy. 

Newberg is the head of Participants in LAMOST, US (PLUS), which, in collaboration with the Chinese LAMOST project, has so far obtained ~2 million spectra of galactic stars, using a new 4m-class telescope that can obtain spectra for 4000 objects at the same time. She also runs MilkyWay@home, a volunteer computing platform that supplies about a PetaFLOP of computing power (equivalent to the largest supercomputers) to her research projects, which include finding the best model of the Milky Way and running n-body simulations of Milky Way evolution.

Judy Radul will be in residence at EMPAC to develop her technical approach to computer-controlled video installation. Her artist’s research draws on the technical, theoretical, and applied study of camera motion and present-time image production (live video feed). The artist will present her in-progress research, asking, “What is the meaning of camera motion, and what are the potentials of new technologies to help us reflect and intervene in these meanings? This inquiry into camera motion as the subtle carrier of the image is in the context of a daily life saturated with cameras and screens, each of us conscripted by our devices to document and disseminate but rarely to deliberate on their effects.”

Judy Radul was born in Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada. Her interdisciplinary practice has recently focused on video installation but also includes sculpture, photography, performance, and mixed media installations. Her latest works involve an original computer-controlled system for live and pre-recorded video. Her work, Look.Look Away. Look Back, was shown in the Berlin Biennale 8 (2014). Her large-scale media installation World Rehearsal Court (2009) has been shown at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, U.B.C. Vancouver; the Generali Foundation, Vienna; Media City, Seoul, South Korea and Henie Onstad Art Center in Oslo, Norway. Related to this project, with Marit Paasche she co-edited a book of collected essays and images, A Thousand Eyes: Media Technology, Law and Aesthetics (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2011). She has a BA in fine and performing arts from Simon Fraser University and an MFA in visual and media arts from Bard College, New York. She is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery and teaches at Simon Fraser University. In 2012-13 Radul was a guest of the DAAD Artist-in-Berlin Program.

Judy Radul was in residence to develop her technical approach to computer-controlled video installation. Her artist’s research draws on the technical, theoretical, and applied study of camera motion and present-time image production (live video feed).

The artist presented her in-progress research, asking, “What is the meaning of camera motion, and what are the potentials of new technologies to help us reflect and intervene in these meanings? This inquiry into camera motion as the subtle carrier of the image is in the context of a daily life saturated with cameras and screens, each of us conscripted by our devices to document and disseminate but rarely to deliberate on their effects.”