Why Send Art Into Space? | Short Film Showcase
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Why go to space? Why do we leave this place?
It's easy to be. The act of going there pushes boundaries in and of itself. It's a blind exploration into a very cold, inhospitable, and expansive universe. Sometimes the opportunity is so tremendous that you just can't say no to it, and I think this had a little bit of that flavor.
Both Planet Labs and Autodesk at P9 explore how we can use new technology in interesting ways to have insights about ourselves, about this planet, about the way that we have an effect on the world. Planet Labs is a company that has one of the largest constellations of objects in space. They have satellites which circle the Earth and image the surface of our planet once a day, all the time, to figure out how we're affecting landscapes, what changes are like, looking at climate patterns. Many different things that you can do with those images.
This new data set allows us to ask all sorts of new questions, like how much water is in every reservoir around the planet. Also, you can catch rainforest deforestation as it's happening, rather than notice six months later that a giant chunk of forest disappeared.
As a spacecraft designer, it's been really amazing to bring an artistic inspiration into our satellite design. We really want to make these beautiful spacecraft. We call them "doves." This is an example right here of the art laser etch into the spacecrafts. We feel that it's important to put art in space, on our radio domes, on everything we do, because we want to inspire people to investigate science, to investigate creativity, to go do beautiful art pieces in an uncomfortable and unique manner.
The first thing I heard about this project is I love the idea of an art gallery in space that no one can see. And I was like, uh, did I just hear art in space? From that moment forward, art in space kind of became a really exciting concept for me.
Our prompt was to make art that would benefit people on Earth, and I took a really long think about what I want orbiting the Earth, knowing that something was watching me, be it a surface monitoring satellite. In this case, my understanding is that these satellites will be in orbit for about a year and a half or two years before they're pulled down by gravity into a fiery death in the atmosphere.
And um, I think that's beautiful and perfect. It's an amazing expression of art and impermanence to take a little bit of yourself and represent that in terms of something creative. To express yourself with a piece of art and then launch that and send it to a place very, very far away is an exercise and opportunity in and of itself. It's an exploration of how we can have the role of creativity in space.
Please help us reflect back on what we do here.
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