Dear Opportunity | 10:07 | 2019
A love letter to a robot millions of miles away with a nod to On Death and Dying.
When NASA declared Opportunity, also known as Mars Exploration Rover – B, inoperable after 15 years of exploration, an unusual archive of public mourning was inadvertently created. This piece pairs images and sounds made by Opportunity with messages sent from mourners around the world via NASA’s digital postcard service. Structured though an application of the Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief, these virtual sentiments and images reveal a rare moment of collective humanity. Source Material: mars.nasa.gov
Dear Opportunity is the second in a trilogy of films composed from NASA’s publicly available image and sound archives. At once playful and precise, each film applies a structuralist rigor to reanimate the vast archive that frames public conceptions of the universe.
The complete trilogy includes: Seeing Spacecraft Earth (2021), Dear Opportunity (2019), The Known Universe (2016)
SCREENINGS:
Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, 2020
Mimesis Documentary Film Festival, Boulder, CO, 2020
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Hollins University, Roanoke, VA, 2020