Q&A with Amy Hauft

Hurtling Through Space: Q&A with Amy Hauft

Director of the College of Art, Jane Reuter Hitzeman and Herbert F. Hitzeman, Jr. Professor of Art

In 700,000:1 | Terra + Luna + Sol, Amy Hauft grapples with questions of perception, celestial scale, and the space between abstract and experiential knowledge. The vast, three-part installation at MASS MoCA is the most complex of her career. In this Q&A, we spoke with her about 700,000:1, her working process, and humanity’s place in a dangerous universe.

Can you talk a bit about the title? To what does the ratio refer?

700,000:1 is the chance of a person on Earth being killed by a meteor strike. Now, that math is skewed for the possibility/ likelihood of one big, extinction-level event. But for comparison, the odds of being killed by a shark are around 8 million to one. So the risk from meteors is actually not that remote.

In 2013, a meteor the size of a bus smashed into a frozen lake in Chelyabinsk, Russia. The sonic boom blew out every window in town. I thought: But we already have so many things to worry about!

Tell us about the “Terra” section of the installation.

Imagine a sphere one mile in diameter. If you slice off the top two feet, you have a “sphere cap,” 36 feet across. In the gallery, I built that sphere-cap form as a low, turf-covered hill. I built a mirrored version of that same form to represent the sky. That form was created by hanging thick blue yarn across a circular frame suspended from the ceiling, creating the illusion of an enormous bowl.

When the viewer walks to the top of the hill, their head parts the yarn strands and disappears upwards into the bottom of the bowl. To others in the gallery, their body appears headless. And for the headless viewer, their vision is bounded by the interior of a gigantic blue bowl: their new horizon.

Those are dramatic images—and quite distinct, depending on the viewer’s specific location.

In all my work, there’s a sense of physical encounter. The viewer’s body is experiencing something, telling them something. I think about the difference between what we know as physical beings and what we know as conscious entities. Here, the mind/ body split is made literal. I also wanted to be sure there was value for people of all physical abilities— whether or not they climb the hill.

Installation view of “Terra,” from the exhibition 700,000:1 | Terra + Luna + Sol at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. The low hill, which measures 36 feet across, represents the top, two-foot “cap” of a sphere one mile in diameter. The draped blue yarn creates an inverted version of the same form.

Photo: Tony Luong

The “Luna” section took some complex fabrication. Can you walk us through that process?

I bought a digital file 3D model of the moon, generated by satellite telemetry, from NASA. I shrunk it, inverted the geography (so the exterior craters show up inverted on the interior surface), and divided it up into about 140 pieces.

With a CNC router, I milled each unique piece as a foam mold and took them all to MASS MoCA, where we cast them out of Aqua-Resin. We assembled the pieces into a 15-foot diameter sphere—it was like the world’s craziest three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle!

In the gallery, most of the moon is hidden behind a floor-to-ceiling wall. The viewer climbs a short set of utility stairs and ducks their head through a portal into the sphere—and, suddenly, they’re inside the moon.

The inverted moon texture does something weird to your optical perception. The eye wants to see what it knows. But with exterior now made interior, the eye has trouble understanding. The sense of whether you’re looking at something convex or concave sort of flips back and forth.

“Sol” also plays with the limits of visual perception.

Yes, it’s in a smaller gallery, about 1,000 sf. A Rococo chandelier, handmade in clear Venetian glass and gold leaf hangs peculiarly low to the ground. The chandelier is about 5 feet tall, maybe 4 ½ feet wide, and looks like some unreasonably extravagant flower arrangement. It feels oversized and too detailed for the space, and, of course, way too low.

Instead of the small flickering flame-bulbs this chandelier would normally sport, I’ve installed 15 high-lumen LEDs. It’s all too much to look at— the over-the-top Baroque details of the chandelier, the way-too-bright lights—you have to shield your eyes from the very thing you are trying to see. The gallery is even a little warm because of the intense light.

For “Luna,” Hauft created an outside-in, 15-foot diameter model of the moon.

Photo: Tony Luong

How do you hope viewers will engage with this project?

I’m interested in creating an awareness in the viewer that we are standing atop the Earth, hurtling through space. Right now! The true physical circumstance of our tiny civilization existing within the universe is both awesome and terrifying. We spend a lot of time trying hard not to know that.

700,000:1 | Terra + Luna + Sol, on view at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, May 2022–January 2023.