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Standing
alongside a road or a set of train tracks, a car or a train passes you by a
high speed. The pitch of the sound changes as it approaches, then races by
because the sound waves are compressed in front of the high speed moving
object. We have all experienced this scenario and sensed the rush of the
sound changing and the gusting force of the object and it passes at high speed.
If you co
uld
capture that sound visually, what would it look like?
Now imagine,
instead at traveling just faster than the speed limit but slower than the speed
of sound, but traveling close to the speed of light. What would that object
look like as it passed?
The LightSpeed
Astronauts Collection are based upon this idea. My inspiration comes from
childhood, watching the Apollo moon landings and science fiction shows on TV.
During my early
teens, I became aware of the fundamental concepts of astronomy, cosmology and
interstellar space travel by watching the “Cosmos” Series by Carl Sagan, in
which he creatively explained Einstein’s theory of relativity and the Doppler
Effect of light speed travel. Later, another inspiration is Stephen Hawking’s
book: “A Brief History of Time” in which he explains the concepts of light
speed and black holes.
If the viewer
is standing still and these astronauts were racing by you at the threshold of
light speed. How would they look? If you could capture a millionth of a
nanosecond of that image where they were right in front of you as they raced
by? The color spectrum could not keep up with their velocity, so what would
their color be at that instant they passed the viewer? What would the
colors be? If your eyes were slightly angled to the left or right, or tilted up
or down, how would that change one’s color perception and image? Would the
image still have human form? Would the image be stretched or distorted? The
LightSpeed Astronauts Collection are a creative visual interpretation of that
effect.
The choice of
the astronauts as the theme comes from the fact that they are the only humans
who have traveled the fastest, and they have a heroic archetype status in
modern culture.
The medium used
is acrylic on canvas.
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