Focus on: the big picture [2014] | robotlab

In a process taking months, an industry robot draws a Martian landscape - with but a single line. the big picture is a creative process, surpassing the possibilities of human creativity. In the installation the robot is giben the role of a landscape draftsman - the big picture thus refers to traditional art forms based on human perception. This drawn landscape has never been beheld by a human eye, though - only by a Mars robot. Through algorithmic operations, the robot artist converts visual data from that robot into a single uninterrupted path, consisting of more than 900 million movements. The line, stretching for hundreds of kilometers on the surface of the drawing, forms an abstract structure that gradually approximates a photorealistic image. The original photograph on which the drawing is based is from the MastCam of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The shot was taken in the afternoon, local Mars time, on the 528th Mars day (sol) of the mission (January 30, 2014).

Video Documentary:

ZKM | Institute for Visual Media

Camera: Moritz Büchner, Matthias Gommel, Rabea Rahmig, Martina Rotzal, Christina Zartmann
Editing: Martina Rotzal
Voice over: Rabea Rahmig
Sound: Anton Kossjanenko