Join us for a presentation by Brooke Belisle (Stony Brook University), followed by a response by Lucia Allais (Columbia University).
Resolving Nebulea: Aesthetics and Arguments in Early Astrophotography
Hazy celestial objects called nebulae were a mystery to astronomers for at least two thousand years--and this mysterious was bound up with larger questions about the size and shape of the universe. This talk examines a moment when dry plate techniques and long exposure times make it newly possible to photograph deep space. It revisits a debate between two early astrophotographers who used different methods, and disagreed about which nebulae in their images were actual or artifacts. Their argument illuminates the role of aesthetics in scientific insight; and also suggests its importance in periods, like our own, when changing visual technologies restructure how reality appears representable.
Brooke Belisle is Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in Art History at Stony Brook University, where she also directs the Graduate Certificate in Media/Art/Culture/Technology and is affiliated with the Alda Center for Communicating Science and the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. She researches and teaches the comparative history of visual media aesthetics with a focus on expanded/experimental formats and relationships between lens-based and computational methods. Her recent book, Depth Effects: Dimensionality from Camera to Computation, connects emerging strategies of AI with early photographic practices and ongoing stakes of mediating spatial depth. Her current project, Seeing Stars: Astronomical Media, traces transformational moments in our view of the universe, asking how both reality and representation are rewrought with changing aesthetic techniques. Her research has been supported by major fellowships from the ACLS, Getty Foundation, and Mellon Foundation, and she is currently a fellow of the Linda Hall Library of Science.
RSVP required to received pre-circulated reading and, for non-Columbia affiliate, a QR code to access campus. To RSVP, email comparativemedia@columbia.edu.