Antonella Gasperini

Night Vision: from silent movies to contemporary astronomy

Abstract

Abstract. Night vision” is a performance that combines cinema, theater and the traditional academic lecture into a new experiment in scientific communication. The goal is to deal with complex aspects of current astronomical research using seemingly distant languages. Starting with news of the early twentieth century, introduced faithfully through reproductions of original newspaper articles, a specific astronomical subject is tackled travelling in time through silent cinema and the scientific progress of the last century up to the present day.
The project is made up of four events that have the same format but deal with different themes:
1. Einstein's general relativity (‘Lights all askew in the Heavens’);
2. Research on extraterrestrial life and the exploration of Mars (‘Life on Mars?’);
3. Comets and their impact on the origin of life on Earth as well as on its possible end (“Rain of comets”);
4. Telescopes and how we observe the Universe (‘Eyes on the Sky’). Thanks to the collaboration with important institutions like the Library of Congress and the National Cinema Museum of Torino, it has been possible to bring to light some unpublished silent movies.

At a glance, ‘Night Vision’ wants to establish a new way of scientific communication: instead of adapting the scientific content to the everyday language of the present time, ‘Night Vision’ suggests to develop a language based on scientific knowledge through a dialogue mediated by the cinematographic fiction.

Biography

Antonella Gasperini is the head librarian at the INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri (National Institute of Astrophysics–Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory) in Florence since 1993. She oversees all aspects of library operations and staff management. In addition, since 2005 she is the coordinator of the Servizio Biblioteche e Archivi dell’ INAF (Library and Historical Archives Service of the INAF); she is responsible for the centralization of library activities within INAF. Some of her ongoing activities include the organization and the study of the Arcetri historical documentation. She is also a collaborator of the Public Outreach staff at Arcetri Observatory in the various public outreach projects.