WEBVTT

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[Music]

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My name is Erika Blumenfeld and I am an artist and
I'm obsessed with the stories

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that connect us to the cosmos. I was in Scotland on route to a artist residency that was artists and scientists together

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on a sailboat to sail the Scottish Isles and meet
communities there. So in order to get there we had

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to pass through this road cut and I just remember
looking at this road cut very very distinctively

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and it was so interesting and I could see
all of the layers of strata and I've always

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been interested in rocks and I've always been
interested in geology but there was something

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about that that really captured my imagination.
So I came back from that trip thinking about

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rocks and I was watching this documentary on
geology and there was this amazing thing where

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the episode pans to a scientist standing at
a road cut in Scotland. It happened to be the

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exact road cut that I had gone through and he
was telling the story about how these rocks

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aren't just like the rocks in the Catskills in
New York, but they are the same rock and that at

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one point those two continents were joined and
this is the story of that connection and then

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he said something that sparked this whole thing.
He's like but the story is in the rock and that

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to me captured my imagination. That rocks could
be scrolls of knowledge, that they could be storybooks

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that if you know how to read the language
in the rock, you can unravel the stories and the mysteries within them.

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My hope with Astromaterials 3D is that we can inspire the next generation and that young minds will work with the Astromaterials 3D website and explore the rocks

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and will open their minds. We wanted to create a
tool for researchers anywhere around the planet

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to be able to interact with these samples in a
way to initiate investigation. You can download

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the XCT data. You can download the models and use
them in your own research. And knowing that the

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public doesn't have a lot of opportunity
to interact with these samples. How could

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we bring more of these samples to the public
eye and do so in a way that can allow people

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to an entry into it so that kids and and adults
alike can read and explore? We're developing new

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capabilities for small sample returns so we're
trying to set up our Astromaterials 3D project to be able

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to accommodate and support these missions. As an
artist working at the intersection of art and

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science and nature and culture, I've always been
curious ever since I was a small person and I

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think really it's my curiosities that lead me into
understanding the natural phenomena of our world

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and the stories that we've been telling through
our cultures across time. And so, for me personally,

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it's meaningful to be able to shine light on
these stories and to share them with the public. I

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feel so grateful that I get to be in this place
thinking creatively with an incredible group of

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colleagues and carrying this incredible
lineage of these rocks that came from the

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Moon lunar surface and are now here on our planet
telling their stories. It's just an incredible

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privilege and I never lose sight of how cool it
is that I'm sitting here looking at Moon rocks.

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[Music]