Rocketing Imaginaries: Futurity and (Extra)Planetary Environments in The Visualities of Spaceflight

火箭般的想象：太空飞行视觉中的未来和（额外）行星环境

• 批准号: 2571881
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2571881
• 关键词: Rocketing; Imaginaries; Futurity; Extra; Planetary

My project will investigate the visual histories of spaceflight, considering how these visualities shape collective imaginaries regarding societal, planetary and cosmic futures. Through centring visual analysis, my work addresses the often elided and multiple environmental histories of spaceflight. From the terrestrial lift-off of rocketry through orbital sojourns to their final Pacific splashdowns: spaceflight infrastructures span multiscalar and transnational territories, threading all together in a transplanetary ecology of technological processes. Prioritising archival material from European and U.S. space programmes, my project contends that these new techno-environmental entanglements might best be interrogated through their visual modes of representation. Spaceflight visualities -- which include everything from paintings and digital renderings of speculative technologies to photography of (and from) space vehicles -- use the bombastic hypervisuality of space technologies to tell complex stories around how planet, cosmos and human destiny are increasingly intertwined. Rather than objective depiction or documentation, spaceflight visualities are composed of particular aesthetic refrains which trumpet technological progress in the space domain as linear and inevitable. As such, these visualities are deeply enmeshed within specific ideological, geopolitical and economic regimes of thought. And yet, despite the powerful role visualities play within understandings of spaceflight, a sustained interrogation of these infrastructural and cosmic aesthetics remain woefully overlooked and lacking. My highly interdisciplinary project is the first to implement a rigorous aesthetic analysis of spaceflight visualities, in order to parse and examine the ideological positions which become increasingly naturalised through the supposed neutrality of such images. Moreover, my project anticipates that spaceflight visualities necessitate new forms of aesthetic interrogation to be formulated, sociotechnically informed theoretical frameworks which can feedback into the arts and humanities. Finally, through my involvement with The Science Museum, my project will directly impact public discourse around the uses of spaceflight. My project will build upon, and unite, three distinct critical fields: the environmental histories of spaceflight, aesthetic analysis and the generation of collective imaginaries. By prioritising the role aesthetics play in collective understandings of emerging technologies, my project acts as a form of redress for the consistent undervaluation of visualities and aesthetics in contemporary sociotechnical imaginaries. Embracing the possibilities opened by this direction of research, my project shall address the following research questions:How do visualities both obscure and aestheticise the ecological consequences of spaceflight? What are the historicities of spaceflight images and what role do these images play in the formation of contemporary (sociotechnical) imaginaries?What role do aesthetics play in the generation, propagation and dissemination of particular forms of (extra)planetary futurity over others?Images inform how we imagine, but they also make visible changes to how we see; how then do interrogations of spaceflight visualities necessitate the development of new frameworks for visual analysis of the sociotechnical?

我的项目将研究太空飞行的视觉历史，考虑这些视觉效果如何塑造有关社会、行星和宇宙未来的集体想象。通过集中视觉分析，我的作品解决了太空飞行中经常被忽略的多重环境历史。从火箭的地面升空到轨道停留，再到最后的太平洋溅落：航天基础设施跨越多标量和跨国领土，将所有这些都串联在技术过程的跨行星生态中。我的项目优先考虑欧洲和美国太空计划的档案材料，认为这些新的技术与环境的纠葛最好通过它们的视觉表现模式来审视。太空飞行视觉效果——包括从绘画和推测技术的数字渲染到太空飞行器的摄影——利用太空技术夸张的超视觉效果来讲述关于地球、宇宙和人类命运如何日益交织在一起的复杂故事。太空飞行视觉效果不是客观的描述或记录，而是由特定的美学限制组成，这些限制宣扬太空领域的技术进步是线性的和不可避免的。因此，这些视觉效果深深地融入了特定的意识形态、地缘政治和经济思想体系。然而，尽管视觉效果在理解太空飞行中发挥着强大的作用，但对这些基础设施和宇宙美学的持续质疑仍然被严重忽视和缺乏。我的高度跨学科的项目是第一个对航天视觉进行严格的美学分析的项目，以便解析和检查通过此类图像的假定中立性而变得越来越自然化的意识形态立场。此外，我的项目预计，太空飞行视觉需要制定新形式的美学质疑，社会技术信息丰富的理论框架，可以反馈到艺术和人文学科。最后，通过我对科学博物馆的参与，我的项目将直接影响公众对航天用途的讨论。我的项目将建立并统一三个不同的关键领域：太空飞行的环境历史、美学分析和集体想象的产生。通过优先考虑美学在对新兴技术的集体理解中所发挥的作用，我的项目作为对当代社会技术想象中视觉和美学一贯低估的一种补救形式。拥抱这一研究方向所带来的可能性，我的项目将解决以下研究问题：视觉效果如何模糊和美化太空飞行的生态后果？航天图像的历史性是什么？这些图像在当代（社会技术）想象的形成中发挥什么作用？美学在（外）行星未来的特定形式的生成、传播和传播中发挥什么作用？图像告诉我们如何想象，但它们也对我们的观看方式产生了明显的改变；那么，对航天视觉的质疑为何需要开发新的社会技术视觉分析框架呢？