In 2015 NASA scientists declared that they had evidence to show that liquid water runs down canyons and crater walls on Mars during the summer months. This discovery raises the chances of Mars being home to some form of life. NASA unveiled evidence of an ocean that might have covered half the Martian northern hemisphere in the distant past. This has led to speculation about the existence of giant but slow-moving waves on the Red Planet. The Mars rover Curiosity has been exploring the surface of Mars since August 6, 2012. One of the rover’s main goals is to find out if Mars has ever offered environmental conditions favorable to microbial life, a goal that also includes the investigation of the role played by water.

The artwork “waves of mars” is based on a picture that Curiosity took in January 2016. The original picture has been digitally alternated in such a way that from a certain distance it looks like a massive wave of water. In the past humankind formed a visual iconography of its habitat on Earth based on their natural direct visual experiences. However, with the discovery and scientific exploration of Mars, we are now travelling in the reverse direction: when the first humans land on the planet they will bring with them an extensive set of visual experiences about the new environment that has already been inhabited and visually mapped by machines. Thus “waves of mars” also questions the relationship between reality and the construction of reality. It´s an incontrovertible fact that machines are now producing the iconography of an environment that might one day become a new habitat for the human species.