Week 9: Space + Art

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Galileo's First Sketch of the Stars
https://www2.hao.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/resize/
images/education/physicists/galileo_orion-200x275.gif
Blinking and squeezing his eye against the the cold metal, Galileo peered through his telescope and, for the first time in human history, recorded his vision of the night sky onto a sketchpad. Even in the very beginning, our relationship with space has been intertwined with art by representing the untouchable and unreachable through sketching and imagination. Since then, through second world war rocket technology and cold war guidance technology, the stars became more attainable and the public's interest in space grew exponentially (Vesna).

Jean-Pierre Luminet's Black Hole (1978)
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing
/News/2019/04/LuminetBlackHole.jpg?mw=1000&mh=800
Art remains essential in capturing the complexity and vastness of space and making it approachable to a common audience. For instance, consider the rendering of a black hole by Jean-Pierre Luminet, who utilized advanced mathematics and an early IBM computer to model a theoretical shape for this supermassive structure (Scharping).

In modern times, artists are creating spaces for audiences to interact with aspects of space travel they might not otherwise be able to. For instance, artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis has created a replica of a control room and of the moon surface, and has "moon geese" run freely across the moon surface for for audiences to see (Meyer-Brandis). In addition, NASA sent a golden record on their inter-system Voyager mission that contains images, music, and greetings meant to convey the existence of intelligent life on Earth. This moving representation of humanity, essentially a space museum, requires artists to consider one final question: how can we distill humanity to a single art gallery?

The Images on the Voyager
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/images/

 Sources

 Galileo, Galilei. “GALILEO'S DRAWINGS AND WRITINGS.” Galileo's Drawings and Writings | High Altitude Observatory, NCAR, www2.hao.ucar.edu/Education/FamousSolarPhysicists/galileo-drawings-writings.

JPL. “Images on the Golden Record.” NASA, NASA, voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/images/.

 Meyer-Brandis, Agnes. “THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE: Lunar Migration Bird Facility.” Agnes-Meyer-Brandis//THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE / Lunar Migration Bird Facility - MGA, www.blubblubb.net/mga/mga-control-room.html.

Scharping, Nathaniel. “The Decades-Long Struggle to Draw a Realistic Black Hole.” Astronomy.com, Astronomy.com, 5 Apr. 2019, www.astronomy.com/news/2019/04/the-decades-long-struggle-to-draw-a-realistic-black-hole.

Vesna, Victoria. “Space pt4.” YouTube, UC Online, 30 May 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5ClKO6AJPo.

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