Site Visit: The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope
& The Howard E. Tatel Telescope
Green Bank, West Virginia, United States
August 15-17, 2016
Green Bank Telescope (2016) with David Blair and GBT staff member in foreground, photo by Amy Catanzano
Project Statement
American radio astronomy has roots in the mountains of West Virginia at what is now known as Green Bank Observatory, an independent facility of the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) that operates the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), the world’s largest steerable radio telescope in the world, and six additional large radio telescopes. Until September 2016, GBT was part of the trailblazing National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), a federally funded research and development center of NSF that is operated under agreement by Associated Universities and dedicated to radio astronomy.
GBT, which reads incoming radio waves from outer space, has contributed to numerous scientific achievements. These include the determination that the gravitational constant is uniform across the universe, the discovery of proto-planets in Orion, the discovery of the Ophiuchus Superbubble, the determination of which galaxy clusters to which the Milky Way belongs, the location of Voyager I, early high-resolution mappings of the moon, and more. Since 2000, GBT and affiliated telescopes have operated in the National Radio Quiet Zone, a wifi free and electromagnetic frequency controlled area.
In collaboration with video and digital media artist David Blair, I was an official visitor to the Green Bank Telescope while it was still a part of NRAO. Accompanied by a GBT staff member, we ascended the telescope in an on-site elevator so that Blair could film footage for his current project, The Telepathic Motion Picture of THE LOST TRIBES, the sequel to his cult classic film, Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees. Dressed in beekeeper suits, Blair and I both played versions of Jacob Maker, the multi-phasic narrator in Blair’s film, web, and art projects who travels time, space, language, and bodies. My version of the character on the telescope appeared in a solo-show video installation by Blair at Galerie de l’Angle in Paris and in Mind Island of the Sky, Episode 3, Season 1, of The Telepathic Motion Picture of THE LOST TRIBES. The character I played on the telescope that day was also documented in an expanded version of my essay, “Quantum Poetics” (2020).
As part of our site visit, we toured other telescopes in the area, including The Howard E. Tatel Telescope, NRAO’s first telescope in Green Bank. The Tatel Telescope was famously used by astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake in the first serious search for extraterrestrial life as part of Project Ozma, which led to the SETI project, founded by Drake and Carl Sagan.
