In Event of Moon Disaster: What is Truth? season

According to a YouGov poll, 16% of the British public believe that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing never happened.

Visitors will be immersed in a 1960s living room in an experience which has the power to make audiences reconsider whether they can believe the media we consume.

‘In event of moon disaster’ was the title of a speech prepared for President Nixon in case of a catastrophe. The speech was never delivered, but artists Halsey Burgund and Francesca Panetta have used deepfake technology to offer an alternative event, which will be played back on a vintage television.

The artists said: “By using the most advanced techniques available, creating a video using both synthetic visuals and synthetic audio (a “complete deepfake”), we aim to show where this technology is heading – and what some of the key consequences might be.”

Halsey Burgund is a media artist focussed on the societal impacts of new technologies and is currently the creative technologist-in-residence at the MIT Open Documentary Lab.

Francesca Panetta is an artist and journalist and director of the Storytelling Institute at the University of the Arts, London.

The work won an Emmy Award for Interactive Media Documentary in 2021.

This exhibition is part of the 2024 What Is Truth? Season