A connection to a remote place - Joanna Griffin place” is an exploration of the relationship between different sources of information about satellite networks, and functions as an observatory for imagining a remote environment. For Impakt Online Translation, she developed a work in which the current coordinates of three satellites are translated into text and images, which have been chosen to open up a 'thinking space' around the invisible presence of orbiting satellites. A recurrent theme in Griffin’s work is her fascination with technological structures and especially with the idea that they represent invisible communication and observation that significantly impact our daily lives. In order to understand the processes and objects that are out of sight, most notably the satellite itself, she began her quest to examine the thin border between openness and restriction of information, which she consequently translated to her own project. Why is it that we can see the observatories that pop up in the landscape all over the world, but not the photographs that the Hubble telescope is making for the NASA high above our heads. Data displayed on the site is selected by the changing, real-time coordinates of three satellites: one is an inhabited space observatory, one an earth observation satellite and the third is a telescope turned on distant galaxies. They form a triptych of viewpoints (Earth_Space, Space_Earth and Space_Space) and also of timescales. The webcams update every minute, the satellite images are usually current to the day, while the Hubble images take a year before they are released to the public domain. The project expresses the positions of the satellites that are being followed both in absolute and in relative terms. In absolute terms, she shows the current numerical coordinates from NASA. In relative terms, such as where the position of the satellite is expressed as the position of a sentence in a Jules Verne novel, uncanny meanings begin to emerge, at odds with the dominant discourse of techno-science culture. Sometimes, the information that can be discovered in her project is quite small, for instance if the satellite is passing over the ocean, but at other times many details are available. For four years, Griffin has been collecting data from countless websites, books, interviews and other media. Using quotes from works by Heidegger, Verne and Blanchot and live data from the Internet, Griffin tells a story of the satellite that is linked to them. Alternately, the satellite could be thought of as reading its narrative to us. The translation of the position of artificial celestial bodies to images and poetics results in an interesting symbiosis of objective cold facts and fascinating ponderings on the nature of place, the colonising of space and the neglected semantics of satellite architecture. This has resulted in a work that not just touches on restrictions on the Internet but that also translates available information into an integrated collection of data, ranging from philosophy to the movement of a tropical storm as expressed in a satellite image. Thanks to Jeremy Quinn for assembling the initial code structure, Thomas Heijmans for ongoing technical support, Felix van Geuns for setting up the server and CD Evans for architecture, criticality and kind support. Follow the link to visit the project at A connection to a remote place |
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