Submitted by Mark Crees on 22 November 2007 - 9:24pm.
Ever since I was a kid I have loved the night sky, gazing for hours into what seemed like eternal blackness punctuated by points of brilliance. As I grew, my father introduced me to the constellations and other stellar wonders and I still remember the sense of awe that rose in me when I first spied the 'Jewelery Box'.
Since that time I have delved into string theory, quantum mechanics, astrophysics and the like and have thoroughly enjoyed films like 'Contact' that raise the issues of religion and science, place and meaning, existence and alien life, etc, in the form particular to the visual arts.
Carl Sagan has been a pioneer in the field, mostly because of his refusal to reduce astroscience to scientism and a film dedicated to him (as in this case) is certainly warranted. I found the images of The Most Important Image Ever Taken beautiful and the explanations valid; it is certainly helpful to get a visual representation of the vast size of the universe. But I found myself intrigued and annoyed at the title of this short film and the statement within it that the image in question (very important to be sure) is the 'single most important image taken by humankind.' Really? One of perhaps… but the 'single most'?
It is unfortunate that in a film dedicated to Sagan, the overarching statement is one of contraction of thought and feeling rather than expansion. I would have thought by now that we had moved beyond the dualism of art and science and could appreciate that meaning is a human construct that delves into both knowledge (however acquired) and art (however expressed). The Hubble Deep-Field Image is indeed important – it speaks volumes about the vastness of the universe – but so to0 is an image of a loving couple's embrace – it speaks volumes about the vastness of human emotion.
The point is simply that in this grand-tragic condition called life we draw on much more than that which is external to us in order to expand and frame our experience. This image is a beauty but so too is the photo of my kids I carry with me each day. Meaning is created in concert with and within the frameworks that we inhabit; for me the stellar universe has never threatened, even when I moved beyond faith in a god and found myself in a period of incredible darkness before moving through it to embrace the beauty of living life in the moment. It reminds me not of how small I am but of how connected everything is (we are, after all, stardust) and of how much wonder there is if we are willing to open our eyes, our imaginations and our hearts.
Beautiful but incomplete
Ever since I was a kid I have loved the night sky, gazing for hours into what seemed like eternal blackness punctuated by points of brilliance. As I grew, my father introduced me to the constellations and other stellar wonders and I still remember the sense of awe that rose in me when I first spied the 'Jewelery Box'.
Since that time I have delved into string theory, quantum mechanics, astrophysics and the like and have thoroughly enjoyed films like 'Contact' that raise the issues of religion and science, place and meaning, existence and alien life, etc, in the form particular to the visual arts.
Carl Sagan has been a pioneer in the field, mostly because of his refusal to reduce astroscience to scientism and a film dedicated to him (as in this case) is certainly warranted. I found the images of The Most Important Image Ever Taken beautiful and the explanations valid; it is certainly helpful to get a visual representation of the vast size of the universe. But I found myself intrigued and annoyed at the title of this short film and the statement within it that the image in question (very important to be sure) is the 'single most important image taken by humankind.' Really? One of perhaps… but the 'single most'?
It is unfortunate that in a film dedicated to Sagan, the overarching statement is one of contraction of thought and feeling rather than expansion. I would have thought by now that we had moved beyond the dualism of art and science and could appreciate that meaning is a human construct that delves into both knowledge (however acquired) and art (however expressed). The Hubble Deep-Field Image is indeed important – it speaks volumes about the vastness of the universe – but so to0 is an image of a loving couple's embrace – it speaks volumes about the vastness of human emotion.
The point is simply that in this grand-tragic condition called life we draw on much more than that which is external to us in order to expand and frame our experience. This image is a beauty but so too is the photo of my kids I carry with me each day. Meaning is created in concert with and within the frameworks that we inhabit; for me the stellar universe has never threatened, even when I moved beyond faith in a god and found myself in a period of incredible darkness before moving through it to embrace the beauty of living life in the moment. It reminds me not of how small I am but of how connected everything is (we are, after all, stardust) and of how much wonder there is if we are willing to open our eyes, our imaginations and our hearts.