REFLECTIONS FROM EARTH - 1980
Through spring 1980, Van Sant tested the viability of Birthday Cake Proposal in the Mojave Desert with friends and collaborators on the ground, and support from NASA, USGS, the City of Los Angeles Survey and Earth Resources Satellite Data Processing Center, and the Stanford Research Institute.
He designed and produced ninety 2ft x 2ft mirror stations, which were placed in the shape of an eye across a 1.5-mile area. Theoretically, sunlight reflected from the mirrors would oversaturate the satellite sensors and “draw” an eye in the resulting photograph. In practice, each mirror had to be calibrated to NASA’s Landsat 2 satellite, which rolled and pitched on its 600-mile-high orbit and was overhead only once in every nine days, often just for minutes at a time. Despite the challenge of receiving satellite coordinates in the pre-cellphone era, Landsat 2 finally recorded the outline of an eye nestled in the socket of the Shadow Mountains on June 11, 1980. Only the pupil was missing. Paw prints revealed that nature had intervened in the form of a jackrabbit and broken the mirror at that location.
A giant human eye visible only from space looking back at the “eye in the sky,” Reflections From Earth was a symbol, said Van Sant, of “man’s new perspective of Earth as seen from space.”“That, as far as I know,” said Richard Feynman, “is the largest drawing ever made by man.” [1]
TEAM MEMBER JOHN STEVENS CALIBRATES A MIRROR STATION, C. 1980, PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
REFLECTIONS FROM EARTH, LOCATED IN THE MOJAVE DESERT, C. JUNE 11, 1980, NASA LANDSAT SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPH
REFLECTIONS FROM EARTH NESTLED IN A ‘SOCKET’ OF THE SHADOW MOUNTAINS, C. JUNE 11, 1980, NASA LANDSAT SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPH
REFLECTIONS FROM EARTH TEAM MEMBERS, C. 1980, PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
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Shadow Mountains, Mojave Desert, CA, USA.
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1980
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N/A
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Sunlight, calibrated mirrors, NASA’s Landsat 2 satellite.
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Mirror stain "eye:" 1.5-miles across
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Unknown
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The LA Bicentennial Committee
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The satellite image exists in reproduction. The location of the original print out and mirror stations is unknown.
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TVS Digital Records
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Van Sant received this commission while studying for his MFA at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now Otis Art Institute), when he won a competition held among graduate art students in Los Angeles and vicinity. It was made for the REIU’s new building in Hollywood. The raw canvas visible in the photograph’s upper right edge and the unfinished appearance of some of the figures suggest that it may record a sketch or a grisaille stage in the work. Alternatively, unresolved aspects of the work may result from student inexperience.
[1] Richard Feynman, Infinitesimal Machinery, 1983.
