UR Black
by Asad Khan
Light has a medium of communication, can ‘darkness’ have it too? This projects seeks to divine and mine a reality beyond human extinction –– through a series of remote-sensed terrestrial and astronomic data visualisation –– simulated from datasets retrieved via terrestrial and airborne remote sensing method of Light Detection and Ranging [LIDAR], Synthetic Aperture Radars [SAR] and Forward Looking Infrared Radars [FLIR]—at the Mauna Kea Astronomical Observatory, situated in a dormant volcano in Hawaii. The project narrates the tale of extinction from the point of view of the geo-traumatic eye of the volcano –– that sees the empty aeons of the geological history, in which humankind appears a vanishingly small episode. The remote-sensed terrain provides a new ground for ‘thought’ beyond its finitude, an extra-terrestrial space of navigation, that is suspended on the abyss between planetary existence and its lack. The visuals provide a fissure to hold anthropocentric thought captive; while abducting speculations into the cosmological darkness of extinction.
The data is a courtesy of NASA and ESA