Anel Eralieva
2.725К

Displays showing a visualization of relic radiation are mounted to a metal structure. While the viewer can make out the “cosmic noise” from a distance, as they approach, the displays tilt away, making any direct view impossible. All that remains to be seen is the reflection on the metal. The closer we try to get to direct observation, the more prominent the role of intermediaries.

The project explores one problem of cosmological knowledge generation: the impossibility of directly observing the object of study itself. Everything we know about space comes to us through temporal, spatial, and technological intermediaries: we see stars that may have already faded into darkness, and we detect radiation that has been travelling to us for billions of years.

One of the most striking examples of this type of mediation is relic radiation (the cosmic microwave background radiation or CMBR), which is an electromagnetic trace of the early universe. The history of observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation reveals a paradox: the improvement of instrumentation does not eliminate intermediaries but instead reveals new levels of outside interference. Progress in cosmology does not mean getting closer to the “genuine” reality, but rather the development of methodologies for working with inevitably distorted and transformed data.