The night sky is ambiguous: a blank surface on which individual desires, thoughts, and feelings are mapped and projected. Cosmology and fiction both share a quest for pattern and meaning and in each field it is the viewer/reader who becomes the active agent - interpreting and seeking meaning. A closer study of the practice of observation helps to bridge the gap between the ‘real’ and the ‘artificial’. No observation is ever truly unmediated. What could amateur astronomers - as a group of people enthralled by the night sky -  tell us about the nature and complexities of how humans create meaning? What can they tell us about observation?  As practice, mode, method?

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In our seminar, we will look at the people and forms - both embodied and technological - this mediation takes. Over eight classes we will delve into the various ways - historical, speculative, performative, and practical -  in which categories such as observation, object, site, and the subject/amateur have been understood. These sessions might reveal how we as individuals observe time and ourselves within the solar system.