The Artful Politics of Picturing the Cosmos (with Lois Rosson and Claire Webb)

Each and every image of the cosmos is an act of interpretation. Scientists collaborate with artists and illustrators to saturate the colorless data of distant nebulae and galaxies and invoke awe. They rotate images, signalling which way is up in a void where ‘up’ does not exist. They make up for the shortcomings of our perception with the power of our imagination. In this episode, space historian Lois Rosson joins Claire Webb to examine the hidden politics of how we picture the universe. What we see in the stars is never just out there. It’s also a projection of what we’re going through here on Earth. From frontier nostalgia to government propaganda and corporate branding to the increasing role of AI in depicting the unknown, space imagery dictates what destiny humanity will manifest.

Om Podcasten

The future never arrives all at once. It ripples through society long before we know what to call it. At the Berggruen Institute, we know that we need more than prediction to name what’s next; we need invention. Each week, Institute President Dawn Nakagawa introduces us to scientists and philosophers recalibrating our cosmologies, technologists coming to terms with alien intelligence, and policymakers scrambling to design systems for a world in flux.  Join thinkers and doers from the Berggruen-verse as we imagine a future that we can accomplish together, instead of one that we’re all working to prevent.