This July, NASA invites us to celebrate the historic 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission. Looking up to the sun, the moon and the stars, we revisit a radio show designed to revolve around the 2017 total solar eclipse. Listeners will learn that the weather threw our program slightly off course. That’s because the first time we streamed The Art of the Eclipse on Jolt Radio was September 6, 2017, four days before Hurricane Irma hit Florida. The southern coast was in evacuation mode.
Our show begins with a flashback to 2013, in Berlin, when we recorded a conversation at the intersection of art and science in the control tower at the abandoned Tempelhof airport, in Berlin. German artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis demonstrates one of her gravity experiments and explains how she raises moon geese.
We share our field recordings and interviews from August 21, 2017, when thousands of people came together to experience the solar event at Miami’s Frost Museum of Science. Dr. Jorge Perez-Gallego, then curator of astronomy at the Museum, calls in to tell stories of his eclipse-viewing adventure outside Madras, Oregon. For the finale, we introduce a selection from the short films screened at the Frost’s Science Art Cinema Film Festival in summer 2017.
Sound Editors: 2017 Guney Ozsan, 2019 Anamnesis Audio | Special Audio courtesy National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Frost Science Museum, Delphino Huang, John Akre, Michael J. Ruiz-Unger
Related Episodes: Studio Drift Drones Swarm an Ode to Apollo at 50, Art and Our Uncertain Future, Art of the Eclipse, Agnes Meyer-Brandis on Science and Creativity
Related Links: NASA, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, Delphino Huang, John Akre, Michael J. Ruiz-Unger, Science Art Cinema Film Festival