I interviewed artist and geographer Trevor Paglen about suspicious activities in the night sky, classified programmes and the weaponisation of human perception in the context of military and civilian influence operations
Category Archive: space
Nesvold calls on experts in ethics, sociology, history, social justice and law to launch a hopeful conversation about the potential ethical pitfalls of becoming a multi-planet species
It is not about B as an individual, nor is it about a society whose name starts with the first letter of the alphabet. It is neither about Jeff Bezos nor Amazon. B is no one in particular. A is a symptom
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The show addresses a series of themes including: gravity as “the greatest designer”, extraterrestrial architecture, deep space mysteries, future body modifications and other matters that raise more questions than answers
“Carrying on in denial is going to bring disasters sooner, whereas by facing up to what is happening and could happen can bring us the strength to have honest and open discussion about it.”
What would aerospace engineering look like if its methods were decoupled from the corporate and military interests?
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In Pre-Star Wars films not only was there a variation in the way different cultures visualized space, but that there were regional trends in the design of their soundscapes
Outer space has presented itself as a contemporary condition where humanness is getting redefined. Are human beings in outer space human, technological or ecological?
The exhibition at FOMU in Antwerp is so good that even i, the only person on Earth stupid enough to profess a total indifference for space travel, decided it was worth coming back to it with a blog review
The project revolves around the idea of sending humans to one of the points in space where gravity is absent. Frozen bodies would float until their weak gravities make them assemble into a blob: in this way, a new ‘human’ planet is extra-terraformed
What do outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each is conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy
Gracie’s experimental breeding programme aims to gradually recreate, in an enclosed habitat, the atmospheric conditions found on Titan and make sure that the common fly would slowly acclimate to it
The Atacama desert in Chile is one of our closest analogues for Martian surface conditions. Benjamin Pother, an artist and anthropologist traveled there with team of scientists to conduct a range of experiences for future space missions
Artist Aleksandra Mir interviews scientists about technological innovations, politics of outer space, the place of the humanities in research and imagined futures that already affect our lives
A series of panels at the Science Gallery in Dublin explores impending global catastrophes: cosmic bullets, climate change and machines that might one day decide to make us redundant
Abu Bakarr Mansaray draws futuristic worlds inhabited by flying machines piloted by skeletons, tanks that look like dinosaurs, dangerous computer virus, ‘Hell Extinguisher’, aliens and other ‘sinister projects.’
The synthesizer simultaneously synthesises variations in the Earth’s magnetic field with cosmic rays and Jupiter’s noise storms
Sonic booms and nuclear power are explored as replacements to petroleum offering up new dreams of energy efficiency and innovation through technology
The practice of targeted killing by drones raises many questions: “How many civilians have been killed as collateral damage during these strikes?” “And even if we’re talking about militants, how can the killings be justified when there has been judicial supervision? “If these drones can reach their targets anywhere, then how is the battlefield defined?” “Right now, only 3 countries use drones for targeted killings: the U.S., Israel and the UK. Where will this stop?” “And if these targeted killings are illegal, why does Europe keep silent?”
The exhibition zooms in on the shock and awe of drone warfare, and addresses the ethical and legal ambiguity of drones, mass surveillance and war at a distance. It presents the work of contemporary artists who are critiquing the way in which military technology and networks can obscure, conceal and distance us from the political and social reality of warfare today
On the opening day of the BIO50 biennial, visitors were invited to put on a light Brain-Computer Interface headset and as they walked and thought across the exhibition space, their brain waves was recorded. This collective performative thinking will later be converted into radio waves and transmitted as collective consciousness – and subconsciousness into space. The event will be streamed in real time as audio visual performance from the cabin of the Dwingeloo radio telescope in The Netherlands
Inspired by the work of J.G. Ballard, our story looks to the bleak, man-made landscapes of the future and asks: What happens when virtual environments become indistinguishable from reality? Will our global culture allow us to choose where to live, and who will stop us? What will we do with knowledge that becomes freely available to all?
Space scientist Lucie Green gave a wonderful presentation about the Earth magnetic bubble and about how the moon is electrically charged, Dr Jill Stuart focused on space politics, Tomas Saraceno talked about cities that are lighter than the air, Kevin Fong asked us to reflect on how past expeditions might actually belong to the future. Finally, WE COLONISED THE MOON presented the largest Moon smelling session ever done on our planet
Sue and Hagen’s installation, performance and graphic works seek to demonstrate that the future may indeed be frightening, but also highly entertaining. Previous projects have included creating solutions for space waste by disguising satellites as asteroids, building a solar powered solarium because ‘the sun dies anyway’, synthesising the smell of the moon and embedding it into scratch and sniff cards
My notes from a round table discussion at The Arts Catalyst about the concept of moon colonisation, asking: “Should We Colonise the Moon?”. What’s the future for the Moon – theme park or quarry?
I’ve finally gone through all the images and texts i made and received from the GAMERZ festival in Aix-en-Provence. There’s a ridiculously high amount of new artists and works i’d like to blog about. But let’s start with what i think are the smartest and most elegant works in the festival. Both play with perception, both are by Luce Moreau
Positioning automatically controlled cameras at strategic points around the launch pad–some as close as seven hundred feet–he recorded images of take-offs that capture the incredible power and transcendent beauty of the blast that sends the shuttle hurtling into space. Winters also takes us on a visual tour of the shuttle as a marvel of technology–from the crew spaces with their complex instrumentation, to the massive engines that propelled the shuttle, to the enormous vehicle assembly building where the shuttles were prepared for flight
Sascha Pohflepp is an artist and designer interested in the myths and realities shaped by science and technology. During the radio show, we will be talking space exploration, and more specifically space gardening but we will also talk science fiction, complex science and impossible projects
The Welsh Space Campaign (WSC) launches ordinary Welsh people into outer space, by finding a cosmic context for Welsh traditional culture and skills
Last Friday, i spent the evening at the Arts Catalyst for the Kosmica sound night, ‘a social event for artists, scientists and the cosmically curious exploring sound and sonification of space.’ That means drinks, crisps, pop corn, space music and presentations by curator and artist Honor Harger, sound artist and composer Kaffe Matthews and designer slash sound artist Yuri Suzuki. Arts Catalyst uploaded the videos of the whole evening. And i’m adding a summary of the presentations, along with a few links to the projects, historical facts and scientific discoveries mentioned during the presentations
This week we are talking with Nelly Ben Hayoun about space science technologies, aliens and music. The designer spent a whole Summer in California to direct the International Space Orchestra. The cast of the opera is pretty spectacular. It is performed by space scientists from NASA Ames, Singularity University, International Space University and the SETI Institute. The music was composed by Damon Albarn, Bobby Womack, Maywa Denki and Arthur Jeffes. The lyrics are by Bruce Sterling & Jasmina Tesanovic. Finally, Grammy-Award winner Evan Price was in charge of the musical direction
For people working at the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre, a military complex where all cosmonauts have been trained since the 1960s, Gagarin remains a hero while space is the only reality they know, almost blending with the surreal machines they work with, they seem to be trapped in a window of time. In the shadow of faded dreams, thus sheds the light on a close-knit community of space-lovers, still clinging to the decaying legacy of the 1960s Space dream
Time machines, false memory, earthly landscape, moon rock gardening, flying saucers, lunacy, galactic adventures and the occasional rabbit. That’s the world sketched by Sue Corke and Hagen Betzwieser. Roughly speaking, Sue is a printmaker and Hagen is a ‘New New Media’ artist but together they are more than the sum of their parts, they are We Colonised the Moon.
It’s hard to believe that the first tourist flight into space might already be planned for next year. But Joseph Popper is probably not very impressed by the prospect because he came up with an idea so bold i doubt even Richard Branson would think twice before funding it. The designer believes that there aren’t many unknown territories for men to explore, really. One of the very few thrilling adventures left to mankind would be to send one person on a voyage into deep space from where they will not return
This week, Joseph Popper proposes to send one person on a journey into deep space from where they will never return, Neil Usher designed a robot that finds human faces in the clouds, Shing Tat Chung looked at what would happen if traders and estate agents gave free reign to superstition and Tobias Revell talks about the timeline that charts the history of power up to the early 22nd century and how that 24/7 banking ship fits into the picture
There’s an exhibition featuring sci-fi, history, video games, homosexuality, soap operas, censorship and a powerful sense of humour at Cornerhouse in Manchester right now. The show is called Subversion and it questions and knocks around whatever assumption you might have about an homogenous ‘Arab world’, whatever image politicians and the media might have given you about its culture and identity
One of the works on show at the AV Festival this month is the extremely long-term project that sees Agnes Meyer-Brandis training a flock of young geese to fly to the moon. The whole training started last Spring and according to her schedule, the birds will go on their first unmanned flight to the satellite in 2024
The Lost in Space section of the exhibition explores the outer space, that part of the universe that excites the imagination of scientists and artists alike. Because of its high percentage of science fiction, pure speculation and enigma, that was the part of the show i liked the best
Oscar Lhermitte attempts to turn our attention back the stars in the city sky by adding new constellations, narrating contemporary myths about London. Twelve groups of stars have been designed and catapulted guerrilla-style at different locations in the city, and can only be observed by the naked eye at night time. Each of these constellations tells a story that is directly relevant to the Londoner
Just back from London where i managed to catch up with up to 7 exhibitions in a day. Btw, there’s only a few more days to enjoy Parreno’s magnificent videos at the Serpentine and i urge you to run there if you haven’t seen the show yet. Another exhibition i liked a lot is Matthias Schaller’s series of Disportraits at Ben Brown Fine Arts