Visual Culture Seminar

In her talk and screening of her short film Making of Earths, Asia Bazdyrieva will address key questions which sit at the core of Geocinema — a documentary-led research project that she developed with designer and filmmaker Solveig Suess. Working with visual materials from Earth science research including calibration images, climate model imagery, and satellite footage, she will reframe Earth sensing and imaging processes. Geocinema considers such processes of recording, transmitting, archiving, stitching and distributing data as an assemblage of technological mediations that constitute a vastly distributed cinematic apparatus – a camera. The project unfolds through two strands: one explores the fundamental nature of cinema itself, while the other questions the geometries of power that are implicit to the medium.

The Caltech-Huntington Program in Visual Culture, which is funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and based in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), features new undergraduate course offerings, guest lecturers, and other programming to foster conversations between humanists and scientists. Its activities are organized by HSS and other Caltech faculty in collaboration with scholars at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Lunch provided. Please RSVP to Caroline Murphy at caroline@caltech.edu.