Hi,

My name is Tom and I am one of the new artists in residence at Artcore.

For this residency I want to think about the way that we may, in a not too distant future inhabit another planet. Mars in particular. I have drawn some similarities recently; the COVID pandemic has been affecting the world for 9 months thus far, and it would take a manned mission 9 months to journey to Mars with our current propulsion systems. For both of these, stepping out into a new world is pertinent.

I do wonder however, how much our idea of living on a foreign planet is influenced by cinema – almost 100% I would imagine. With it being topical for many decades; 2001:A Space Odyssey up to The Martian and beyond.

I would also consider how any images we see are able to influence our perspective or imagination, to illustrate this point I would like to share a video of the recent fires and orange skies across the Western coast of America. Bare in mind that the theme music in this video is from the sci-fi classic ‘BladeRunner’, and how our imagination of Mars, a dystopian future, and existing representations in cinema can influence our thought processes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71C94bXWieI

 

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