NASA Cosmic Dust Animation

This dataset comprises a stop-motion animation of 2,552 individual cosmic dust grain images, derived from NASA's Cosmic Dust Catalogs (Vols. 1–12, 18–19). Each image was isolated from the catalogues and cropped to a 1:1 aspect ratio, the same square dimensions used in the video installation SPECKS, before being sequenced into an animation of approximately 3.5 minutes.

The sequence moves chronologically through the catalogues, spanning the years 1982 to 2015. Across the sequence, the dust grains are the constant, particles on a cosmic timeline that predates their capture. What changes across this sequence is the full apparatus of human technological practice surrounding them: the scientific instruments used to collect and analyse them, the imaging and printing technologies used to document them, and the systems used to circulate and reproduce them. The evolution of that apparatus is visibly inscribed in the sequence, measured against a material that remains, in every meaningful sense, unchanged.

The animation was produced as part of the practice-led research project We Are Supernova (MSCA Fellowship, Goldsmiths University of London), which investigates the material continuum connecting cosmic silicon to the semiconductor. It functions both as a research dataset and as source material for the two-channel video installation SPECKS, in which the animation is projected onto black screens measuring 200 × 200 cm, installed within three tonnes of sand.

Source material: NASA Cosmic Dust Catalogs, public domain.