Artist's comment
	Neil Roberts

New horizons - 'Avec un ciel vierge…' Some years ago, I can remember seeing what I thought at the time were photos of the rings of Saturn or the surface of Mars or something similar from 'out there'. But later I learned that the images were actually computer simulations based on non-visual data sent back from the probes. Reconstructions, approximations, interpretations. When I started this work, I began from this realisation that the finding and fixing of images from space seems to be fraught with 'flaws in the glass'. Between the eye and the object lie many layers of distortion and obscurity, both physical and otherwise, that determine what we believe about that which we are looking at. A mathematical miscalculation, dust on the lens, the status of empires against outposts of the unknown, the lights of the city, a refusal to see.

- Neil Roberts

Prepared by Tim Sherratt (Tim.Sherratt@asap.unimelb.edu.au)
for publication on ASAPWeb. 22 June 1997.