2020 was the thirtieth anniversary of a series of photographs of the earth and other planets taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on its way into interstellar space. Mimicking the binary nature of the data, I chose black and white (0:1) fabrics for this work; the overall design emulates the pixelation and random noise of the original image. The earth is but a fraction of a pixel in this array. I marvel at the scientific and technological prowess needed to acquire the images. I wonder at the grand scale of the cosmos reflected in those images. I sometimes despair that we will never realize, even with this evidence, that our existence is fragile and how interdependent we are on earth.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
