Why the Moon, Luke?
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2018
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Luke Jerram is that rare bird, a genuinely popular yet acclaimed contemporary artist. And he's obsessed with the moon. So he's made one: seven metres wide featuring 120dpi detailed NASA imagery, and he's taking it around the world. This is his story, as well as the moon's..
Every day Luke Jerram cycles to his studio across the river in Bristol and watches its dramatic changes. It has the second highest tidal range in the world and it's the moon that makes this happen. Luke's become fascinated with finding out everything he can about the cultural, artistic and poetic significance of the moon, and the latest scientific developments around it. It both reflects our culture and inspires it.
Being colourblind he's interested in all forms of light, and moonlight is fascinating and has very particular properties. The fact we see 'the man in the moon' is a perceptual and optical illusion. But again, different cultures see different imagery - in China they see the Hare in the Moon.
Luke presents his own story of making these works and hearing people's responses to them, woven in with the new soundtrack he's commissioned from composer Dan Jones. We talk to fellow contemporary moon obsessives James Attlee and Jay Griffiths, but it's all filtered through the very particular consciousness of one artist and his imagination, and the hard slog of his creative process.
Producer Beth O'Dea.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. I have loved the moon from when I was very small one of my earliest memories was being in a car with my brothers and my parents going home and there was a |
| 0:56.3 | full moon in a very clear sky and I thought as many children do that the moon |
| 1:02.4 | was following us the kind of ghostly galley and sailing across the sky. |
| 1:07.0 | Hi, I'm Riana Dylan, and welcome to Seriously. |
| 1:14.0 | That was the author Jay Griffiths. |
| 1:17.0 | And that feeling she describes, watching the moon, admiring it. |
| 1:22.0 | I do that every time I see it, because although we see the moon almost |
| 1:27.2 | every night, I think there's still something so wondrous about looking up at the Earth's satellite. |
| 1:34.7 | Artist Luke Gerham couldn't agree more. |
| 1:37.6 | He's pretty obsessed with the Moon, |
| 1:40.6 | so much so in fact that he's made one. |
| 1:44.0 | This is the story of his art installation, |
| 1:47.0 | a 7 metre wide moon that's travelled the world. |
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