The Earth Is an Image is a web-based work created by artist and engineer Xin Liu exploring the orbital coverage of artificial satellites that are used for geo-imaging, weather forecasting, and related technologies. Proposing a post-anthropocentric view, Liu tunes into the minds of several satellites that have been abandoned in orbit at the end of their missions.

An antenna installed in Hong Kong captures the radio signals of three retired satellites that pass over the city approximately four times a day. Despite becoming obsolete two decades ago, these satellites are still dutifully orbiting and transmitting data back to Earth. The satellites’ FM radio signals and climate images are converted into an audiovisual experience of rhythmic sounds, ethereal cloud-forms, and glitchy echoes that are live-streamed online. Alongside this digital composition, a dialogue unfolds between a satellite and someone on the ground, telling the story of orbiting metal bodies that are stranded eight hundred kilometres from Earth. When the satellites are outside the antenna’s reception zone, The Earth is an Image tracks their movements and displays their altitudes and coordinates.

In a poetic enquiry into the lifespan of satellites, Liu not only examines advances in satellite broadcasting, but also provides an alternative experience of distance and space, illustrating the complex relationship between human and non-human life forms.

We invite you to explore the work deeper. Science-fiction novelist Chen Qiufan wrote Sounds of the Universe, a short story inspired by Xin Liu’s poetic exploration of technology, space, and humanity in The Earth Is an Image.

Xin Liu is an artist and engineer who takes a post-metaphysical approach to explore the personal, social, and technological spaces in our world. Her most recent work centres on the verticality of space, extraterrestrial explorations, and cosmic metabolism. Liu received her MA from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and BE from Tsinghua University in Beijing. She is currently the Arts Curator for the Space Exploration Initiative in MIT Media Lab and an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute in Silicon Valley. Her numerous awards and fellowships include the X Museum Triennial Award, the Van Lier Fellowship, and the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab fellowship.