Jean-Pierre contemplant le trou noir

This project pays tribute to the pioneering work of the astrophysicist Jean-Pierre Luminet, who created the very first IT simulation entitled Distant image of a black hole (…) back in 1978.

This free interpretation by Flavien Théry is a transposition in the form of a stereoscopic tapestry, which lends it a certain presence, while highlighting the paradoxical character of the image given that a black hole itself is  unrepresentable by definition. This work deliberately moves away from the synthetically-generated images that are very commonly depicted in the worlds of science & art and submerges us in a mental space that is conducive to stereoscopic illusion. It thus aims to offer us the chance to see through “the mind’s eye”, which characterises the implementation of the project for the scientist and the artist alike. In April 2019, once this tapestry was complete, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration project revealed the first “real” image of a black hole, showing just how accurate Jean-Pierre Luminet’s vision had been 40 years earlier.