First image returned by Mars Pathfinder.
While perhaps unimpressive in the eyes of the visually literate public,
accostumed to flashy digital special effects on televison and in the movies,
these stills are profoundly significant, overcoming real space (119 million
miles from Earth) with near real-time contiguousness. Their meaning does
not arise from cinematic entertainment, but from the raised awareness of
the Universe we have gained by being collectively telepresent on the Martian
surface. These pictures were not representations of science fiction scenarios,
but a de facto window into another world entirely. The feeling of remote
presence was intense. "We're there!", shouted NASA mission control
personnel.
As with the Moon landing before, what is most remarkable about the Pathfinder
mission is not the technological tour de force, but the fact that millions
of people watched simultaneously the first images as they were broadcast
(and soon uploaded to NASA's Web site). It took about 10 minutes for each
encoded image to arrive. It took the NASA team about 30 minutes to process
the data stream into color images. As the first color images were unveiled,
again, live on CNN, approximately one hour after arrival, I was struck with
the realization that what I was seeing at that very moment, in the privacy
of my home, was exactly what the surface of the fourth rock near the Sun
looked like one hour ago! Twenty one years ago Viking gave us our first
glimpses of the Red Planet. Today, through this near real-time experience,
Pathfinder gave us a sense of being telepresent on Mars. While it took the
spacecraft seven month to travel to Mars, the near-instantaneity -- given
the relative distance between the planets -- of the telecommand, remote
response, and image-retrieval, touched us with a renewed sense of proximity
beyond the material limits of physical space.
This is the first time ever that a fully mobile and wireless telerobot
(the rover Sojourner) is sent to explore another planet, a true landmark
for telepresence and the history of the space program. The pictures of the
landing site taken by Pathfinder will be used to determine the exploratory
path of the rover Sojourner, which is 2 feet by 1.5 feet wide and 1 foot
tall. Once deployed, the rover will navigate the environment and negotiate
the terrain on its own, at a speed of two feet a minute. A unique kind of
human-machine interaction takes place in this mission. The cognitive process
of a human being is remotely projected on a distant robot, which in turn
has autonomy to sense the surroundings and make decisions that are in its
best interest (for example, to prevent an accidental fall from a cliff).
While the aesthetic dimension of this experience will go unnoticed by most
directly involved in the project and telespectators alike, it is precisely
this aspect of the media event I witnessed today that I find particularly
significant. Some of the aesthetic features unique to this telepresence
event are the relativity of space and time (seven months to get there, ten
minutes to transmit a picture); the nature of the human-machine interface
(combination of teleoperation and autonomy); remote space negotiation and
navigation (unpredictability of the terrain, feeling of remote presence);
teleoperation (at-a-distance control of a robot); capture, transmission,
reception, processing and unveiling of the images; the instantness of the
pictures; the realization of all this live on television (integration between
the one-to-one experience of remote control with the public space of televison);
and the impact of this telepresence event on the collective consciousness.
All this, I suggest, has paramount aesthetic value -- aesthetic, not artistic.
The investigation of the artistic dimension of telepresence, however, is
a fascinating challenge that must be met. It is clear that the aesthetic
dimension of this historic event introduces telepresence to the population
at large, pointing to a future when personal telepresence will be an integral
part of our daily lives. As our presence on the Red Planet increases via
telerobots, and eventualy with humans, one can easily foresee Webcams enabling
us to look at the Martian surface on the Internet with the same ease and
regularity as today we see the skyline of several North-American cities.
Other forms of personal telepresence will be developed in the future in
many segments of society. For example, through a telerobotic hand surgery
might be performed remotely, or a document located in one city could have
the original signature of an individual in another miles away. Artists working
today can directly respond to an event of this magnitude by working with
the very same means employed in the fantastic exploration of outer space:
telepresence, remote operation and networking. No object can rival the experiential
quality of today's event.
The very first images broadcast live on CNN were hard to discern or recognize
as a landscape. In science as in art, what you can't recognize, you cognize.
Awareness of the unfamiliar remote terrain, coupled with intermittent visual
feedback, guided and will continue to guide the telexploration of the dry
flood channel where the spacecraft landed. As Pathfinder deploys the small
rover Sojourner on the inviting crimson terrain, it will be searching the
Martian surface (and below) for signs of life, intelligent or not, present
or past. I need no further evidence, however, because today I saw, telepresentially,
clear signs of intelligent life on the surface of Mars: ours.
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