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Dan started his talk with an overview of the ideas that inspired the project. In particular, his research/reading as well as preliminary conversations in the run up to the Whole Earth conference had drawn him to 2 key insights: 1) The connection the Blue Marble has with the environmental movement and 2) The photograph's widely-touted status as "one of the most reproduced images of all time." Showing how it adorned everything from book covers and posters to decorative photographs and objects, Dan highlighted the Blue Marble's omnipresence in the world of Graphic Design. See Jennifer Levasseur and Robert Poole (above) and Neil Maher (below) for further discussion of environmental issues and ideas on the photograph's reproduction.

Dan discussed the work's conceptual background and ideas related to generation loss. He noted in particular the influence of composer and artist Alvin Lucier, whose work of sound art I am Sitting in a Room featured Lucier recording a narration, playing that narration back into a room and re-recording it multiple times. Both Dan's and Lucier's work re-contextualise an original utterance (visual or aural) through continual repetition. In the case of Generation Loss, this re-contextualising serves as a commentary on the parlous state of the Earth and its environment in 2022.

The visual culture of environmental activism also provided wider context for Generation Loss. Here, Dan discussed the interesting ways in which repetition and reproduction can serve as powerful political tools (the very act of mass producing posters, placards and banners - through methods such as silkscreen printing and lithography - has long enabled designers to spread their messages and promote their ideas to a wider public. For more on environmental protest posters, see Neil Maher's talk below.

Dan talked us through his methods and process, revealing striking images of how swiftly and noticeably the image degraded. He reflected on the extent to which the image began to resemble a "psychedelic poster" in its warped composition, colour scheme and increasing illegibility, making interesting connections between his own work and protest graphics of the sixties and seventies. Particularly notable was the extent to which, by scan fifty, the image actually looked like a "mushroom cloud", itself a prominent visual icon associated with postwar America (sometimes argued to have been the defining technological visualisation of the postwar era until the Blue Marble (see Neil Maher's discussion of Stewart Brand, below, for more on this). In many ways, Dan's work alluded to and came to embody some many of the historical issues discussed throughout the events.