Space Farm is one of the newest national public outreach projects undertaken by NASA this Autumn. Seven farms across the country are celebrating the history of the national space program by creating a corn maze that commemorates NASA’s achievements and progress in space. The mazes are created by The MAiZE, the largest cornfield maze consulting and design company.
I will admit that I am quite biased as I look forward to Fall all year round and thought that M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs was brilliant, but I personally believe this is one of the most spectacular ways of engaging the public in space exploration. By embracing the popular lure of paranormal crop circle creation, NASA has repainted the phenomenon to educate and inspire. When embracing the folklore of space exploration, its nice to know that we’re not alone out there.
For more information on participating farms, visit Space Farm 7.
Ansuman Biswas and Jem Finer wrapped in technicolor harem pants, bejeweled waistcoats and golden turbans took the mystic flight of the magic carpet in 2001 Zero Genie. Wonder by wonder, they reconstruct the history of human space flight. Their artist statement reads:
…The Zero Genies are just beginners. Poverty stricken, slightly uncoordinated, and yet noble, they are convinced that space travel is not the exclusive pursuit of the rich and rational Western world. They are here to show that a comfortable carpet and well-packed hookah will suffice.
The genies are flying from inside the magic lamp of Cosmonaut’s Training Center in Star City, Russia. More technically, the intervals of periodic weightlessness occur from the elliptical flight path relative to the center of the Earth.
The genies are stark contrast next to cosmonaut flight attendants in their blue jumpsuits. They recreate the narrative of human space flight, remove it from its conceived place in history books of western developed societies. Biswas and Finer are not supernatural creatures only to awaken from the pages of Arabian Nights and return to human form when their seconds weightlessness fleet- they are dreamers and believers who are only bound by the limits of their imagination.
Biswas and Finer are two of many artists that have explored creating art in zero gravity.
For more information as zero gravity art, check out the Zero Gravity Arts Consortium or Arts Catalyst.
These photos are currently blowing my mind. The 1.3 billion dollar Atacama Telescope snapped these shots earlier this week. Sitting on an Andean plateau 16,000 feet above sea level, the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (ALMA for short) is the most powerful radio telescope in the world. Using several gigantic antennae, it uses radio technology to peer deeper into space. This could never be seen using any technology that involves the naked eye. As they said themselves,
The Antennae Galaxies (also known as NGC 4038 and 4039) are a pair of distorted colliding spiral galaxies about 70 million light-years away, in the constellation of Corvus (The Crow). This view combines ALMA observations, made in two different wavelength ranges during the observatory’s early testing phase, with visible-light observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
Our universe really is beautiful – even the things we cannot see.
Revered Richard Avedon edited and photographed the April 1965 Harper’s Bazaar. The issue was devoted to youth culture- “Pop, Rock, and the Sexual Revolution”.The cover, which made the American Society of Magazine Editor’s 2005 list of Top 40 Magazine Covers, features Jean Shrimpton in a Day-Glo space helmet. The image has been highly reproduced as an emblem of the sixties when Mod was king and the Space Race dominated popular culture.
The issue was a guidebook to the cultural now. The edition features spacesuit inspired fashions of André Courrèges, the likeness of ‘60s megastars like the Beatles as well as the rising talent of Andy Warhol, Roy Lictenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and others.
I especially enjoy the images of ”the Shrimp”, some shown above. Shrimpton was the It girl of 1960s fashion and became the face of off-beat culture. Avedon couldn’t have picked a better model to be his galaxy girl. At a time when the idea of a female astronaut was unheard of, Shrimpton was the face of youth culture.
The worlds of fashion and space industry in the 1960s collided. Alex previously posted about Nicholas de Monchaux’s bookSpacesuit: Fashioning Apollo which among other things discusses how Playtex, the brassiere manufacturer, secured the contract to make the Apollo Spacesuits.
Vincent Fournier’s Space Project constructs a new reality in the fantasy of space exploration. Over the past decade and a half, Fournier has captured a wide array of space organizations from around the world: Gagarine Cosmonaut Training Center (Russia), Mars Desert Research Station (USA), Guyana Space Center (French Guiana) Atacama Desert observatories (Chile), International School of Space (Kazakhstan), Kennedy Space Center (USA) and other facilities.
Through the seamless compilation of photographed space, he has created an identity of the space traveler that is simply human. His artist statement reads, “The project came from the experience that we all have whilst looking at the stars during our childhood, when we suddenly realise the infinity of the universe and that we are but a tiny part of it.”
His spacesuit photograghs are striking as they take on personalities of their own. Sometimes the suits look lost in a foreign land, like the 2008 Mars Society creatures venturing across desolate terrain. Others seem completely domestic, as in the 2007 Star City space suit photographs, where hues of the space suit blend perfectly into the wallpaper as if it is a fixture to hung on the wall like a clock or a collection of well loved trinkets. Even Fournier’s machines look like sleeping giants ready to awaken, beep, gurgle and then turn their gaze to sky.
This past Wednesday NASA unveiled the design of the next generation of heavy launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS). It’s design bears an uncanny resemblance to Saturn V, the Apollo launch vehicle that took Buzz, Neil and the rest of the gang to the moon.
The Space Launch System is the first exploration-class vehicle since Saturn V. Incorporating technological advancements from the Space Shuttle and Constellation program, SLS would be the most powerful rocket in history giving NASA the potential to explore deeper into space. The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) that will house the future crew venturing into solar system resembles the Apollo Command/Service Module [CSM]. The beefier Orion will be able to house a larger crew for a more extended period of time.
The Space Launch System harkens back to the golden age of space exploration- where anything was possible. A time when human exploration beyond the lower earth orbit was a national goal. Space was the place and humans needed to be there. It’ll be exciting to see the development of the Space Launch System in the upcoming years (fingers crossed). With a possible lift capacity of 130 tons or more, SLS is a beast. If developed, who knows how far we can travel.
