12 mins 10 secs
In 2005, an Arts Council England International Fellowship at the Space Sciences Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley led me to work with Aerogel, a new material developed by NASA and used by the Stardust Project to capture interstellar dust. Since I had a number of cones and rings made of this uncanny immaterial substance, I was interested to hear as much as I could from Andrew Westphal, the Principal scientist examining the recovered dust. I wondered if my work with aerogel could, in some way, parallel their research. I had already discovered the fragility of this material and therefore I began to interview him by suggesting a metaphor: my vision of stardust as fragmented ruins.
Camera: Liliane Lijn
Editor: Logan Paul Fraser