Category Archives: Space Arts

Space Arts

Space Art: “Giant Steps” competition + Illustrating other worlds

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Giant Steps is an art exhibition and competition sponsored by Vital 5 Productions in Seattle, Washington.

First proposed as an imaginary exhibit on the website w3seattle.com, Vital 5 Productions has decided to bring this concept to the international arts community as a competition and exhibition, designed to inspire the creative and technical communities to imagine and propose art projects on the surface of the Moon. While the incentive for the participating artist or team may not be the actualization of their project, there will be a $10,000.00 cash prize, determined by a jury composed of aerospace and art professionals. Beyond this monetary award, Giant Steps will yield an unprecedented bounty of art-in-space proposals, giving humanity at large an inspired and original collection of conceptual artworks previously not considered.

Find more about the program Art competition has lofty ambitions: the moon – The Seattle Times.

GiantSteps

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Artists at NASA JPL strive to make exotic distant worlds seem more like real places to the public rather than the abstractions of dry scientific language: What does space look like? These NASA artists are trying to show you – Pasadena Star News

Dan Goods, for example, depicted what the Juno mission will see in the clouds of Jupiter with an installation that

consists of a large cloud that hides infrared lights. Infrared light is invisible to the naked eye, but is visible to many cell phone cameras. Just as the Juno mission uses special detectors to peer through the clouds of Jupiter and reveal the depths of its storms, you can “see” lightning storms underneath this dynamic surface.

A whimsical but very appealing approach by Goods’ team to take the public to exoplanets was via a series of gorgeous travel posters: PlanetQuest – The Search for Another Earth

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Multiple media, Space Arts

Space arts: Astrophotographer André van der Hoeven + “Project Juno” – the story of Helen Sharman

A couple of space arts items:

*  The Art of Space Photography — Vantage — Medium – An interview with astrophotographer André van der Hoeven about the field and his techniques. Includes many wonderful images. Here is a video compilation that he has made:

* Project Juno – Arts Theatre – This “is a one woman show about Helen Sharman’s remarkable story of becoming the First Briton in Space”. The show will be performed by Rachael Halliwell at the Harrogate Theatre in Yorkshire, England on Dec.3-5.

Helen Sharman won a competition to travel to the Russian Mir space station in 1991.

Here is a short video interview with Sharman:

History, Space Arts

Space arts: Michael Kagan + Ed Belbruno

I mentioned Michael Kagan here a couple of years when his astronaut painting won the Best Art Vinyl 2013 top prize. The BBC reports about a space mural he created for a company in California: The Moon landings like you’ve never seen them before – BBC

The vast, life-size picture covers the entire wall of a room in the former Hughes Aircraft factory where America’s first lunar landers – the Surveyor spacecraft – were constructed. These mid-60s missions were sent ahead as robotic scouts to explore the Moon before the first crews arrived.

Hughes vacated the site 20 years ago and the Surveyor factory floor has been recently occupied by tech start-up RadPad who were attracted by the building’s space history and wanted a spectacular centrepiece for their new offices.

See a time-lapse video of his painting of the mural in the BBC article.

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“Mankind” by Michael Kagan, 2014

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I’ve also posted here about artist, mathematician, and orbital mechanic extraordinaire Ed Belbruno. He will be having a show in New York City on October 22: Space.com Presents: The Art of Ed Belbruno.

On Oct. 22, meet Princeton University artist and mathematician — and Space.com columnist — Ed Belbruno in a public showing of his art at Café Minerva in Manhattan. Join Space.com to celebrate how Belbruno’s art unlocks discoveries in space exploration, and experience the beauty of the universe in a whole new way.

Here’s an interview with Belbruno from 2011:

 

Multiple media, Space Arts, The Moon

Video: “Bringing NASA’s Apollo Archive photos to life”

High definition video wasn’t available during the Apollo trips to the Moon but the mission photos often have very high resolution. Here is an interesting video by Tom Kucy in which he adds slight motions to such photos that result in at least a hint of a more vivid view of those adventures.

GROUND CONTROL is a small personal project, bringing NASA’s Apollo Archive photos to life. With the intention of bring more missions life, stay tuned for more.

Space Arts, Space Music

Houston Grand Opera debuts ‘O Columbia’ chamber opera celebrating space exploration

This week the Houston Grand Opera presented the new chamber opera O Columbia, which has a space theme:

Don’t miss the world premiere of O Columbia, a new chamber opera that celebrates the wonder of exploration and reflects upon the necessary risks of discovering new frontiers. Inspired by interviews with Houston–based NASA astronauts, scientists, and engineers, O Columbia traces a history of dreamers and explorers–from Sir Walter Raleigh journeying to the New World, to a Houston teenager experiencing communion, and later, heartbreak, with a Columbia space shuttle astronaut, to future astronauts venturing to the far reaches of the solar system-in an ode to America’s pioneering spirit.

Created by and featuring a constellation of rising operatic talents, O Columbia comes to life in an inventive and surprising production in an unexpected venue–just across the street from the Wortham Theater Center. Space is limited, so purchase your tickets early!

Join us at the lobby bar before each performance to meet and mingle with members of the creative team-and stay after the performance for a talkback with the artists. The Revention Music Center invites you to bring your refreshments into the theater during the performance.

 “O Columbia captures the intrinsic need to explore and discover that humans have felt since the beginning of time, as well as the sense of wonder that led so many of us to pursue careers in space exploration. It’s exciting to see our story portrayed in this important context and to see how deeply it resonated with the HGO team through our interviews with them.”  – David Rose, Shuttle Program Engineer

The opera was created by composer Gregory Spears with librettist Royce Vavrek, and stage director Kevin Newbury. Here is a Q&A (pdf) with the creative team.

… what began with a focus on the 2003 space shuttle Columbia tragedy became a broader meditation on America’s history of exploration, loss, and perseverance. The Columbia astronauts’ story is set at the center of a long tradition extending back to the days of sailing ships and moving forward into the unknown future. Our hope is that the piece will be both an elegy for the Columbia crew and a reflection about the heavens as a frontier to be explored at all costs.

More about the work and the reaction to the debut:

Update: A Wall Street Journal reviewer was very positive about the work: ‘O Columbia’ and ‘Sweeney Todd’ Reviews – WSJ –

Exploration, risk and loss are elegantly balanced in the opera’s first two sections. In the first, Becca conjures up Sir Walter Raleigh and the lost colony of Roanoke; in the second, she communicates with an astronaut on the Columbia and then watches in horror as the disaster unfolds. Mr. Spears works this contrast between excitement and elegy through rhythmic variation and texture, switching from contrapuntal energy into homophonic keening. The “loss” sections—as when the ensemble repeats the words “Washed away” in the Raleigh section and Becca’s aching cry of “Columbia, do you read me?” in the second part—are piercingly moving. The third section, which imagines space travel centuries in the future and introduces Lady Columbia as the personification of exploration, pushes the optimistic conclusion hard, but the writing remains strong and compelling, especially the interweaving vocal lines of the two principal women.