Seeing Psyche
Binh-An Nguyen
Major: Chemistry (Art Minor)
Genre/Medium: Mixed Paper
About the work: Currently, we can only view the Psyche asteroid through telescopes. At best, we can see it as a smudge of light. However, once the Psyche spacecraft starts orbiting the Psyche asteroid in 2026, we will finally get the first real look of what the Psyche asteroid looks like. For this interactive installation piece, the cutout of Psyche is translucent and allows for light to shine through it. This light symbolizes the possible new knowledge Psyche holds about the “dark” unknowns of Earth’s core, seeing as Psyche is hypothesized to be the exposed core of a protoplanet. This piece allows the viewer to walk around and view Psyche through two very different perspectives. The first perspective is the viewer looking at the asteroid through their own “telescope,” which is a piece of paper with a very small hole in it. They get to experience Psyche more personally, but the small hole in the “telescope” really limits how much they can see. As for the other perspective, the viewer gets to see all of Psyche in the same way the spacecraft will see it. Thus, every viewer gets a clearer view of Psyche, and everyone experiences seeing Psyche together.
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