Episode 102: The Long View

This week, Jessica and Michael discuss the first ever image captured of a black hole and contemplate on cosmic abyss and designing for impermanence.

Jessica says,

This is the opposite of a meme in a way. It’s so profound. It’s so far away. It’s so suitably impossible… There’s something profound about the fact that this thing preceded us, will outlive us. It’s further away than our newsfeeds and I find that almost like a religious experience. And I’m not a religious person.

Also mentioned this week:

NASA, Image of the Black Hole
Matt Ford, New Republic, In Defense of the Blurry Black Hole Photo
Dennis Overbye, New York Times, Darkness Visible, Finally: Astronomers Capture First Ever Image of a Black Hole
James Gleick, Faster
Popular Mechanics, Behind the Scenes of the First Black Hole Photo,
Popular Mechanics, How They Got the Black Hole Picture That Changed Science
NYT, How Katie Bouman Accidentally Became the Face of the Black Hole Project
Margaret Hamilton and Katie Bouman diptych
Mark Lamster, Dallas Morning News, How One Omnipresent Gadget Makes Your Life Worse Everyday
Patricia Leigh Brown, New York Times, An Artist Rises and Brings a Generation With Him
Liz Jackson, The Girl With The Purple Cane
#comicsanstakeover

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Posted in: Arts + Culture, Science , The Observatory

Michael Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, and has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1990. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art.

Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

More from Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand

Episode 127: Fear and Longing
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Episode 126: Screens and Dreams
Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration; Unorthodox; My Brilliant Friend; The Affair; Anil Dash on the dangers of social media; Anna Wiener on Silicon Valley; quarantine dreams

Episode 125: Zoom Aesthetics
Zoom aesthetics and COVID-19; Kyle Chayka on minimalism; Deborah Berke on shared spaces; Jessica Salfia’s poem “The First Lines of Emails I’ve Received While Quarantining”; Megan O’Grady on artistic recluses

Episode 124: That Thing You Do
Making art and design during the COVID-19 pandemic; Christoph Niemann and Daniella Zalcman; Adam Schlesinger; spec scripts for Larry David

Episode 123: Closing Doors, Opening Doors
Looking at COVID=19: Flattening the curve, Washington Post designers Harry Stevens on visualizing social distancing, Alissa Walker on how dots are people, Stephen Sondheim at 90

Jobs | November 05