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The History of Astronomy George Petros, with music by Jonn Serrie http://www.georgepetros.com 1986: photo and illustration collage of xeroxes, scratchboard, ink, grease pencil, and acrylic on bristol board, 4 x 420 (cut into twenty-one 4 x 20 strips), shot for reproduction with a photostat machine. The accompanying text, not shown in the video, was prepared via MacWrite on a Mac 512. http://www.georgepetros.com/art/exit/pages/11-HistoryOfAstronomy-1.htm 2010 additions: photo and illustration collage via Photoshop, 2,000 x 29,908 pixels, executed on a Mac mini; voice overdubs processed via Audacity; two music tracks by Jonn Serrie: First Night Out in its entirety, segueing into the first two minutes of Continuum. Both tracks appeared on the 1994 album Planetary Chronicles Vol. 2, on Miramar Records. In 1986 I created The History of Astronomy for inclusion in EXIT Magazine. A graphic timeline of all things heavenly, it drew upon astronomy, astrophysics, science fiction, mythology, cosmology, aeronautics and UFOlogy. I cut out photos and illustrations from old cheap books, most of which trumpeted the Space Age, to use along with my own drawings. A bar of text consisting of astro-related wit and wisdom ran above the timeline. After its publication I never gave it another thought. In 2009 art director and digital documentarian Paul Horton suggested making an updated The History of Astronomy into a movie. He adapted it for video by scanning and assembling the graphic strips, combining them with new graphics, and cutting it all up into eighty-two 1920 x 1080 images, via Photoshop. He recorded me reading the text for use as a voice-over. http://www.paulhorton.com To convert those images into a ten-minute movie, designer and programmer Robert Lund wrote a PHP program that generated a continuous pan (at 60 frames per second to maximize the smoothness of the visual experience) and generated 34,830 frames. He combined the resulting movie with the voice-over and music, and added the credits and fade-out, via iMovie. http://lundissimo.info Space Music maestro Jonn Serrie agreed to allow use of his music for the soundtrack. His cosmic coolness adds that perfect something, evoking zero-gravity bliss in interstellar overdrive (see my 1995 Seconds Magazine interview with him). http://www.thousandstar.com Many thanks to John Vondracek, Paul Rachman, Deanna Lehman, and Les Barany.