The Impossible Now: Limit Telepresence and Robotic Entanglement on Mars

This article investigates the conceptual and aesthetic effects of “limit telepresence” created by communication with Mars. The vast distance between Mars and Earth makes any notion of real-time presence or a stable shared “now” impossible. This scenario exposes the temporal contradictions at the heart of all telepresent encounters, illustrating that “now” is always some version of “then.” Looking to artists David Bowen and Minna Långström, who collaborate with NASA engineers and use Martian data in their works, the essay argues that these conditions of spatialized time and temporalized space produce unique aesthetic features that stretch the duration of the instant and demonstrate how telepresence is an experience of the past mistaken for the present.