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Flipside
Clementine
Perpetual Motion
Possible World
...

 
 

 

Clementine
2009
HD720 animation
118 minute loop
(clip duration: 17 minutes 56 seconds; this clip is silent)

[click image to play movie]
Please download Quicktime if the video clips do not appear

 
   
This slow, looping, animated film features a single orbit around the moon. Rendered from a computer model where planetary positions and orbits are plotted to correspond as far as possible to actuality, the lunar surface itself is based on data collected by the Clementine spacecraft which spent a some months orbiting the moon in 1994. To refer to it as an animation is perhaps stretching the point as very little other than the camera is animated. The vista gradually changes over time and the camera’s point-of-view slowly rotates over the course of almost two hours, completing a single orbit with only occasional cutting between different viewpoints. One travels slowly and inexorably from full sunlight to the dark side of the moon and back.

The project emerged out of research and site visits made over the past few years to various astronomical observatories in Europe and the USA. During one of these visits I unexpectedly came across a memento from the Apollo 11 mission, namely a small Irish flag that, it was reputed, had accompanied the astronauts into space. Led on by my curiosity about the flag and by extension, its possible connection with Apollo 11 command module pilot, Michael Collins (who, it was claimed by some, had Irish connections) I researched further into lunar science and exploration as well as fictional narratives and biographical accounts and began to build up an idea of what this flight might have been like and in particular, Collins’ experience of it.

Although previous space missions had made successful moon orbits, Collins was the first person to make this journey alone and for some 48 minutes during each revolution of just under two hours, he was entirely cut off from radio contact, his only link with earth. What in many respects was a bold adventure in exploration, science and technology struck me here as an existential encounter with the vastness of the cosmos, an embodiment of solitude.

Christopher Haworth has produced an audio track for the animation, a long-form algorithmic composition consisting of a generative sequence of sound-atmospheres that emerge and fade over the 118 minute duration. It takes its over-riding theme from the popular song, Oh! My Darling Clementine.The Clementine spacecraft was named after the song as it would be 'lost and gone forever' once its mission was complete.

Click here for full version

  
 

 


All works © Tim O'Riley 2009. All photographs © their respective authors.