Wednesday, January 31, 2024 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Colleen O' Reilly
Virtual Event. Access the Zoom link here.
In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration published the first result of their research – our first picture of a black hole. This image was produced using a network of telescopes located around the world and new kinds of machine learning algorithms. As the team explained in the press release, this “first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow” helps astronomers study these mysterious phenomena. But what is this picture? Scientists and journalists alike have described it as a photograph – from thinking of the telescope network as a photographic surface to applying metaphors of witnessing and seeing. And in 2021, MoMA added a print of this image to its photography collection. In this talk, I will explore the implications of this image’s position in the history of photography. How does this project transform data into image? How do computers guess a probable image based on other images, and what notions of objectivity are being employed? How does earth-based digital photography, and film photography before that, shape black hole imaging?