Category Archives: Space Arts

Space Arts, Space Music

Tomita’s “Dreamers in Space” – a space-ballet symphony

Isao Tomita was a pioneer in electronic music who first began experimenting with synthesizers in the late 1960s. Space was a favorite theme of his compositions and recordings and before his death in 2016 he was working on a “space-ballet symphony”: Dreamers in Space – NHK WORLD (incl. video) –

Tomita didn’t manage to finish the project but after his death, his collaborators kept working and the production debuted in Tokyo last November.

Called “Dr. Coppelius,” the production involves a young scientist who dreams of flying into space and a mysterious girl from another world who comes to help him achieve his ambition. It’s a space-ballet symphony in which the 2 characters transcend space and time.

The “young scientist” was inspired by Japanese rocket pioneer Hideo Itokawa.

Kazama’s character, Coppelius, is modeled on Itokawa. He and Hatsune Miku reach out to one another, dancing happily in space. At the end of the story, Coppelius goes traveling in search of unknown worlds. On the way, he finds the space probe Hayabusa floating alone in space. Once again, he encounters Miku. By reaching for the stars, Coppelius finds hope.

Go to the NHK WORLD article for a video showing a clip from the Tokyo performance.

I can remember listening often to Tomita’s recording of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” while in college in the 1970s. Although today I prefer orchestral performances of The Planets, I still find Tomita’s version of Venus quite appealing:

Here is the complete album with all 7 movements:

Education, Space Arts, Space participation

Low Earth Orbit Art Challenge – A student space art competition

There is still time to submit your artwork to the LEO Art Challenge, which is open to “All full-time students at any grade level between the ages of 13 and 22 are eligible”. It is sponsored by Enterprise In Space (EIS) and is a program of the National Space Society.

Low Earth Orbit Art Challenge

Imagine & share with us the exciting environment of Low Earth Orbit in one of many ways.  

Are you ready for the next great adventure?  To mark the first steps of the National Space Society’s Enterprise In Space (E(S) program that will send over 100 student experiments into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), we are offering this worldwide search to find a group of kindred spirits to embark on this exciting adventure challenge. 

We want to see what a low Earth orbit adventure means to you!   Imagine yourself as a professional engineer, designer, advertiser, writer, or artist that has been hired to create promotional materials about LEO and its environment.  What topic or aspect about LEO would your choose to promote?  What format would you use to present it to your customer?   Show us, and you could become part of history as one of the first groups of students to win the chance to virtually make this incredible journey into low Earth orbit. 

You can be one of the first EIS virtual crew members!

Check out the prizes here.

Submission deadline is January 31, 2017 at 23:59 UT.

Space Arts

SpaceCasts: Art about space and art in space

Here are three audio webcasts discussing art depicting space and art sent or made in space:

** Art That Captures the Beauty and Science of Space | The Planetary Society

Marilynn Flynn, Simon Kregar and Rick Sternbach are masters of space art. They talk about how their work furthers science and captures the imagination. The winner of this week’s space trivia contest will win a beautiful print by Marilyn Flynn. Emily Lakdawalla shows us the shy side of Mars’ moon Phobos. Mat Kaplan and Bill Nye the Science Guy take up the water on Ceres and the just-completed National Geographic Channel Mars miniseries.

** Voices From L5 – Space And Art – This Orbital Life

In a new series, Voices jumps back to examine space art, a wide field covering many disciplines from garage art studios to NASA labs. In this episode, Ron Miller, a long time space artists, joins us to give a background into this fascinating world, and a history lesson in the culture surrounding it.

Look forward to more space art episodes, coming soon!

Ron Miller is the owner of Black Cat Studios and a long time space artist. His book, The Art Of Space, is available now.

(This article provides a sampling of artwork images from Miller’s book: An Astounding History of Scientific Space Art from the Past 200 Years – Gizmodo.)

** Voices From L5 – The Story of the Cosmic Dancer – This Orbital Life

Take a journey with us through space history as we examine the tale of the Cosmic Dancer, the first artwork commissioned and designed specifically for space flight, and the first true work of Space Art.

Arthur Woods joins us to tell a tale that spans decades, through the fall of the USSR and the rise of private commercial space, the story of the Cosmic Dancer is inspiring and fascinating.

This video gives a view of the Cosmic Dancer on the Mir space station:

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See the HobbySpace Art section for lots of links to resources for space art.

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Astronomy, Space Arts

Artist Lia Halloran renders the Messier sky objects anew

Artist Lia Halloran has created a set of works based on the celestial objects cataloged by astronomer Charles Messier in the 18th Century. The exhibition Deep Sky Companion is on display currently at Caltech: Art Inspired by Astronomy on Display at Caltech | Caltech 

Halloran created paintings of Messier’s objects with blue ink on semi-transparent drafting film. These were then contact-printed onto photographic paper and cut into circles evocative of the view through a telescope. Prints of each of the 110 Messier objects are displayed on the geometrically skewed lobby walls and stairwells of the Cahill building, which was designed by architect Thom Mayne. Several of the original blue-ink paintings are displayed on the stairway landings.

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M106, 2013 – Lia Halloran

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M27, 2013 – Lia Halloran

Halloran also has a collection called Your Body Is A Space That Sees 

… historical imagery and narratives to trace contributions of women in astronomy since antiquity. The of series of large scale cyanotype prints will interpret a fragmented history and represent a female-centric astronomical catalog of craters, comets, galaxies and nebula drawing from narrative, imagery and historical accounts of Hypatia of Alexandria, Caroline Herschel, Helen Sawyer Hogg, and a group of women at Harvard in the late 1800’s known as Pickering’s Harem or the Harvard Computers. 

Cyanotypes are printed from painted negatives that are based on the objects and narratives that were connected to these early astronomers. This process mimics early astronomical glass plates moving between transparent surfaces to a photograph without the use of a camera.

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From the collection “Your Body is a Space that  Sees” – Lia Halloran

Check out Halloran’s other space inspired works in her online gallery.

Astronomy, Space Arts

The Universe in a Sphere

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[ Update: The original Kickstarter failed but they relaunched it and quickly exceeded their new goal: The Universe in a Sphere (Relaunch) by Clemens — Kickstarter.]

Clemens Steffin has a Kickstarter to help fund production and sales of glass spheres he designed that contain white dots representing galaxies of the supercluster to which our Milky Way belongs: The Universe in a Sphere by Clemens — Kickstarter

Laniakea, that is the name of the supercluster of galaxies we are part of. This tremendous structure can now be yours.

I made this 3,1″ glass-sphere with 600.000 tiny dots, each representing an entire galaxy. I decided to make a Kickstarter campaign, where I try to collect a large amount of people who want to buy such a sphere to make the production affordable. Now I write you to ask, if you are interested in reselling these spheres? They will cost 30€ each, if you buy ten of them and 40€ for a single one. The campaign only runs until the 27th November and if there are enough buyers, the spheres will be produced. The campaign is already funded to 40% and I got a lot of positive feedback.