{"id":1659,"date":"2019-05-24T18:17:52","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T01:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/?p=1659"},"modified":"2019-10-15T11:31:33","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T18:31:33","slug":"space-remixes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2019\/05\/24\/space-remixes\/","title":{"rendered":"Space Remixes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s been a good long while since I documented one of my random research spirals, but this one was pretty interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While catching up on my Instagram friends today, I saw this intriguing background on Aaron Duran<\/a>‘s laptop screen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/Bx2gh9dhKPe\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I wasn’t the only one who thought it was a cool pic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Since Aaron helpfully provided attribution, it was easy to find his source:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/Bxr-hBClHLb\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

And since the artist included their name in the lower left corner, it wasn’t too difficult (with the help of Google Image Search) to find their original post on DeviantArt<\/a>. Note that it was originally posted in January of 2012<\/strong>, judging from the timestamps on the first comments in the discussion thread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But something else turned up while I was doing the image search, because Google’s algorithms also match similar<\/em> looking images. And this one was very similar indeed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/wallpapers\/comments\/is6im\/space_caf%C3%A9\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The comments in that Reddit thread are from July of 2011<\/strong>, a full six months earlier. Comparing the two images, you can see how one was modified into the other–I won’t do a full forensic accounting, I leave that as an exercise for the reader–and in looking more closely, I realized that some things in the “source” Reddit image still bugged me. The top of the “diner” looking like someone had fiddled with the brightness\/contrast settings. The bottom edge of the window looking too clean against the lower panels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, while scrolling through more image search results, trying to locate a higher resolution version that might show some of these possible artifacts more clearly, I hit the jackpot:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
http:\/\/www.freakingnews.com\/Edward-Hopper-s-Nighthawks-in-Space-Pics-79668.asp<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you’re not familiar, Freaking News is a photoshop contest site focusing on news, politics, and celebrities<\/a>. And according to the timestamp, that image was uploaded on April 13, 2010<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there you have it! Just to be clear, I love remixes: each of these artists went to a lot of effort to create their respective works, and I continue to be fascinated by how information propagates and mutates through the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ETA (15 Oct 2019):<\/strong> I found the original NASA image from 2006<\/strong>! “[A]stronaut Robert L. Curbeam, Jr. (left) and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Christer Fuglesang… on the International Space Station.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
https:\/\/images.nasa.gov\/details-s116e05983<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a good long while since I documented one of my random research spirals, but this one was pretty interesting. While catching up on my Instagram friends today, I saw this intriguing background on Aaron Duran‘s laptop screen: I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[23,53],"tags":[146,145,144],"class_list":["post-1659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-randomresearch","category-startrek","tag-makegoodart","tag-randomresearch","tag-startrek"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1659"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1744,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1659\/revisions\/1744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}