Check out the short film Boldly Gone now available online for free:
Boldly Gone is the tale of two estranged brothers who come together to launch their father’s ashes into space. It stars Sean Biggerstaff (The Harry Potter Series), Dimitri Leonidas (The Monuments Men) and Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century).
A Glasgow native, Mark graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music & Drama in 2005. Based in London since 2007, he continues to direct projects spanning short drama, music video, and documentary.
xFilm is an independent film and television production company based in East London. Its first five shorts have all screened internationally at Oscar-recognised or BAFTA-qualifying film festivals and its first co-produced feature, Radiator, has been showing in Picturehouse cinemas nationwide to great acclaim (x.co/6lc1t).
I’ve posted a couple of times about photographer Michael Najjar’s space inspired works (see here and here). He has a new show opening in New York City this month:
Benrubi Gallery is pleased to announce German photo and video artist Michael Najjar‘s solo exhibition, outer space – the artist’s first show with the gallery and the first major showing of this series in New York City. outer space explores the latest development in space travel and how it is shaping future life on earth and in near-earth orbit. Informed by Najjar’s training to become the first civilian artist to fly to space, the series of large-scale photographs capture an intense and immersive futuristic world, inspired by cutting-edge aeronautic technologies and the nascent space tourism industry. The potential of the photographic image is pushed to new frontiers as realistic elements fuse with fictitious realities to make visible what is invisible or beyond human perception.
Central to outer space is Najjar’s personal experience with space flight and the performative aspect of the exhibited images. As one of the pioneer astronauts of Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Najjar has been undergoing an intensive, multistage cosmonaut training in Star City, Russia, since 2012, and is scheduled to board SpaceShipTwo in the near future. The artist uses the actual experience of training (zero-g flight, centrifuge training, stratosphere flight, and underwater space walks, to name a few) to create complex and never-before carried out photos that examine vital connections between humans and technology. Reality and simulation are so intertwined that they become indistinguishable, allowing for novel ways of seeing. Video artworks based on Najjar’s extreme training will be shown as part of the exhibition.
The acceleration in aeronautic research and industry and the birth of commercial space travel has brought humanity on the verge of a new era. The images of outer space – the ultra-high resolution telescope “golden eye II,” the world’s largest centrifuge, the first private spaceport, mineral mining on the moon, or space debris orbiting around the earth at fast speed – all address these technological advancements, attempting to elucidate their important cultural implication through artistic transformation. “By leaving our home planet and flying to the moon or other planets, we change our understanding of who we are and where we come from,” Najjar says. “The point is to reflect on our world and what it means to us and the generations to come after us. It’s about the very origins of the self.”
“Bruce crater: Catherine Wolfe Bruce (1816-1900), philanthropist and patron of astronomy. Between 1889 and 1899 she provided funding for major astronomical instruments at observatories in the U.S. and Germany.” Credits: Bettina Forget
The OSIRIS-REx mission aims to explore an asteroid and bring back a sample of it back to earth. If you submit “a sketch, photograph, graphic, poem, song, short video or other creative or artistic expression” to the We The Explorers outreach program and it will be digitized and sent along with the spacecraft in a memory chip.
NASA is calling all space enthusiasts to send their artistic endeavors on a journey aboard NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft. This will be the first U.S. mission to collect a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth for study.
OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to launch in September and travel to the asteroid Bennu. The #WeTheExplorers campaign invites the public to take part in this mission by expressing, through art, how the mission’s spirit of exploration is reflected in their own lives. Submitted works of art will be saved on a chip on the spacecraft. The spacecraft already carries a chip with more than 442,000 names submitted through the 2014 “Messages to Bennu” campaign.
“The development of the spacecraft and instruments has been a hugely creative process, where ultimately the canvas is the machined metal and composites preparing for launch in September,” said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It is fitting that this endeavor can inspire the public to express their creativity to be carried by OSIRIS-REx into space.”
A submission may take the form of a sketch, photograph, graphic, poem, song, short video or other creative or artistic expression that reflects what it means to be an explorer. Submissions will be accepted via Twitter and Instagram until March 20. For details on how to include your submission on the mission to Bennu, go to:
“Space exploration is an inherently creative activity,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “We are inviting the world to join us on this great adventure by placing their art work on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, where it will stay in space for millennia.”
The spacecraft will voyage to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu to collect a sample of at least 60 grams (2.1 ounces) and return it to Earth for study. Scientists expect Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of the water and organic molecules that may have made their way to Earth.
Goddard provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. The University of Arizona, Tucson leads the science team and observation planning and processing. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA’s New Frontiers Program. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
How might life have come to Earth? Why is asteroid Bennu an important key to answering this question? Journey with us through the story of Bennu and see how it may help us unlock this timeless mystery. Bennu’s Journey combines the latest scientific theories on the origin of the solar system with stunning computer graphics from the Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab and an original score from Tucson composer Ian Zickler. The result is a blend of art and science that tells the story of how asteroid Bennu arrived in near-Earth space and highlights the questions that the OSIRIS-REx mission seeks to answer.
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