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THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY GRAPHICS & WORDS: GEORGE PETROS The History of 1986: photo and illustration collage of xeroxes, scratchboard, ink, grease pencil, and acrylic on bristol board, 4” x 420” (cut into twenty-one 4” x 20” strips), shot for reproduction with an Itek photostat machine. The accompanying text, not shown in the video, was prepared via MacWrite on a Mac 512. (Viewable here) 2010 additions: photo and illustration collage via Photoshop, 2,000 x 29,908 pixels, executed on a Mac mini; voice overdubs processed via Audacity; two music tracks by Jonn Serrie: “First Night Out” in its entirety, segueing into the first two minutes of “Continuum.” Both tracks appeared on the 1994 album Planetary Chronicles Vol. 2, on Miramar Records. In 1986 I created The History of Astronomy for inclusion in EXIT Magazine. A graphic timeline of all things heavenly, it drew upon astronomy, astrophysics, science fiction, mythology, cosmology, aeronautics and UFOlogy. I cut out photos and illustrations from old cheap books, most of which trumpeted the Space Age, to use along with my own drawings. A bar of text consisting of astro-related wit and wisdom ran above the timeline. After its publication I never gave it another thought. In 2009 art director and digital documentarian James Kirk suggested making an updated The History of Astronomy into a movie. He adapted it for video by scanning and assembling the graphic strips, combining them with new graphics, and cutting it all up into eighty-two 1920 x 1080 images, via Photoshop. He recorded me reading the text for use as a voice-over. To convert those images into a ten-minute movie, designer and programmer Robert Lund wrote a PHP program that generated a continuous pan (at 60 frames per second to maximize the smoothness of the visual experience) and generated 34,830 frames. He combined the resulting movie with the voice-over and music, and added the credits and fade-out, via iMovie. Space Music maestro Jonn Serrie agreed to allow use of his music for the soundtrack. His cosmic coolness adds that perfect something, evoking zero-gravity bliss in interstellar overdrive (see my 1995 Seconds Magazine interview with him). Check out Serrie’s music at thousandstar.com Many thanks to John Vondracek, Paul Rachman, and Les Barany. |
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