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Format
inperson
Location and Room
808 Commonwealth Ave
Address
Boston, Massachusetts
As part of the Tuesday Night Lecture Series (TNLS), Boston University College of Fine Arts School of Visual Arts presents a lecture by art historian, Jennifer Roberts, organized by the MFA Print Media & Photography program.
Roberts’ lecture, “The Pastel from Mars,” revisits a remarkable moment in 1965, when NASA’s Mariner 4 probe captured the first images ever transmitted from another planet. While the numerical data slowly processed into television images, engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory improvised: they pinned the data strips to a wall, purchased a box of pastels, and hand-colored the image—creating a color-by-number drawing that became humanity’s first glimpse of Mars. This unexpected use of an eighteenth-century medium to visualize cutting-edge space technology offers new ways to consider visual representation both on ...