Viewing from Where? Satellite Imaging and the Politics of Space Technology: Unpacking Depravity’s Rainbow

Abstract

In this text I consider the intersection of technology, politics, and power, through the linked technologies of rocketry and optical mapping satellites. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies, I argue for the importance of artists and researchers thinking critically about the origins of the technologies they research and use, conducting a technological genealogy of sorts which aims to trace back through the history of these things, and think about the ways that circumstances of their creation might continue to influence their present. In my own case, I examine the ways that contemporary rocketry and satellite mapping were shaped by anti-democratic, anti-humanity impulses, the former in the context of the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the latter in the early days of the Cold War. Starting with a discussion about definitions and politics of technology, I move into a discussion of two long-term creative works, which examine the aforementioned technologies, and draw on them to think about the ways that military technologies repurposed for civilian, scientific purposes, still retain aspects of their original usage.