To the ancient Egyptians, dung beetles were a terrestrial deity. Their motion mirrored that of Khepri, the scarab-headed sun god who pushed the sun across the sky day after day. Their dedication to rolling balls of dung across the desert was a cosmological act in miniature, affirming that the sun would rise again and renew the world from the death of the night. For the Egyptians, the beetles suggested a familiarity with both life and death as instinctual navigators of thresholds: they descend underground to mate and emerge with new life. In this way they were seen as guides of the underworld, endlessly crossing back and forth between either side of existence.

As one sought passage to the afterlife, they were said to encounter the gods of the underworld, who awaited them with riddles, their answers to which would determine their fate. In anticipation of this moment, the precise responses required would be told to a scarab beetle. The beetle would then be mummified and placed in the ear of the deceased. At the time of judgement, as the gods asked their questions, the scarab would whisper the correct answers into the ear of the supplicant, ensuring their successful passage to the eternal realm.

In 2020 the International Astronomical Union released an image from an observatory. It’s a strange picture, as though somebody has collaged a brick wall out of the night sky and then half heartedly tried to Tip-Ex it all out. Almost indistinguishable from stars to our own eyes, the white lines that run diagonally across the image and dissect the sky are the light trails of satellites. They are highly reflective things and the light of the moon, sun and stars shine off their protective coats into the lenses of observatory telescopes. Their trails interfere with long exposure images and so the delicate observations of astronomers are interrupted by the indiscriminate movements of indelicate satellites. Five years ago there were around 3,000 satellites in space; in another five years there may be 58,000. More than half of all objects ever launched into orbit have gone up in the last five years alone. They form a mesh around the Earth, as though weaving out of light a perpetually orbiting blindfold. The sight of other planets and stars from Earth will soon be a historical oddity, offered only by the very objects that inhibit it.

The beetles have been treading almost perfectly straight lines across the sand for thousands of years with the moon and Milky Way as their guides. In an appropriately mythic turn, they now find themselves lost in circles. Their lines bend into curves that loop in on themselves. As cities throughout Africa grow, light reaches further into the desert and the night sky is slowly obscured. Orientation has become a provisional thing; it is impossible to triangulate from an oscillating centre.

How many times can information be faithfully mirrored before it falls into noise? At some point, it might be difficult to look up to the sky and receive a clear signal that confirms one’s reality either way. Then we look down and see that we have already begun weaving nothing out of nothing to maintain the bigger, distant picture.

By Emily Webb

Michael Sandford is an interdisciplinary artist based in London. His practice exploits the permeability of contemporary boundaries between virtual and physical realms in order to construct and explore new forms of public space.