Night Sky: Saturn North from Earth

Night Sky: Saturn North from Earth is an electronic simulation of a night sky filled with stars. Bulloch based the image on a digital ‘star catalogue’: a database in which the positions, relative distances and brightness of all known stars have been meticulously recorded. She marked out a section of the sky based on its visible constellations, the familiar patterns that people have used to orient themselves for millennia. Next, however, Bulloch shifted the vantage point of the viewer to a spot far removed from the Earth, to a location that is completely out of reach for human beings. The result is a representation of real space and real stars, but seen from a perspective that no human could ever occupy with their own eyes. Consequently, the image is both scientifically correct and entirely impossible.

This work belongs to a series, the most well-known of which was part of the 2008 theanyspacewhatever exhibition in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. For that installation, Bulloch transformed the interior of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic cupola into an artificial starry sky. Since then, she has created countless variations, from large-scale public installations to small panels for more intimate spaces.