Space Cool Coulture

First Space Art Exhibit Aboard the ISS

karenlau — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:26:35 +0000

Garriot chose a brush painting titled “UP!” created by Zen Sumi-e artist Drue Kataoka, to share with the ISS astro and cosmonauts. Aside from bringing art into the earth’s orbit, Garriott has also created art inside the ISS. Video game developer Richard Garriot became the 6th private space tourist to board a Russian Soyuz and hang out at the International Space Station for a few days. His father, Owen Garriot, is a former NASA astronaut who spent time floating around Skylab and Spacelab in the 1970′s-1908′s.

SNL’s Spoof on Space Olympics

karenlau — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 22:51:08 +0000

As imagined in 3022, the space olympics. Love the use of Philip Johnson’s structures at Fresh Meadows as a backdrop. Used to play under that globe when I was kid all the time.

50 Years of NASA/ART

karenlau — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:19:09 +0000

NASA’s yearlong celebration of 50th anniversary of space exploration has culminated into a unique space art exhibit. From McCall, Warhol to Wegman, NASA/ART – 50 Years of Exploration, is a diverse collection of various artistic expressions of space exploration.

“As the space agency turns 50 this fall, the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) will launch a national tour of NASA | ART: 50 Years of Exploration, featuring 73 works from those artists. NASA | ART opens at the Art League of Bonita Springs in Bonita Springs, Fla., Oct. 25. It will be on view there through Jan. 17, 2009, and then travel to 10 museums through 2011. The exhibition is organized by SITES and NASA in cooperation with the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. It features nearly five decades of creations by artists as diverse as Annie Leibovitz, Nam June Paik, Norman Rockwell, Doug and Mike Starn, Andy Warhol and William Wegman…These works—ranging from the illustrative to the abstract—offer unparalleled insight into the private and personal moments, triumphant victories and tragic accidents that form the storied history of NASA.”

A companion book with the same title as the exhibit will be on sale at the traveling exhibit.

!mm Space Art Wanted

karenlau — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:46:50 +0000

My spacey artist friend Ayako Ono, is working with Tohoku University to launch a collaborative piece of space art that will be launched onboard SPRITE-SAT, around January 2009. Submissions will be open for selection starting Aug 6 til Aug 18. For further information, check out the Facebook invite.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Christie’s auctions a piece of Apollo History for Pop Culture

karenlau — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:55:18 +0000

“Christie’s Pop Culture auction on June 25 in New York will include a range of collectibles celebrating the diverse nature of American popular culture — from 1930s comic strips to the current craze for vinyl designer toys. Not only are Hollywood stars honored in the sale, but memorabilia from the stars of NASA are available with eight lots of photos autographed by astronauts. Coming from the estate of Lewis Hartzell, the former head chef at NASA during the Saturn, Gemini, and Apollo space programs, a highlight includes an official NASA photograph of the crew of the Apollo 11, singed and inscribed by all three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin (estimate: $3,000-5,000).”

Some of the lots:

NASA goes Folksie

karenlau — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:42:14 +0000

2008 is the 50th Anniversary of NASA.
This summer (June 25-29 and July 2-6) NASA is honored to be one of three featured programs in the 42nd Annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall in Washington DC. “NASA: Fifty Years and Beyond” will showcase the role that the men and women of NASA have played in broadening the horizons of American science and culture, as well as the role that they will continue to play in helping to shape the future. The festival will also highlight the Himalayan nation of Bhutan and the music, food, and wine of Texas.

750,000 Lego Bricks of Kennedy Space Center

karenlau — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:31:43 +0000

It’s declared the Mother of all Lego Models.

750,000 Lego Bricks
2500 build hours
1506 sq ft

Wow, that’s dedication.

Cows, Angels and Shuttles

karenlau — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 22:22:28 +0000

After successful public project art projects with CowParade and a Community of Angels, the space industry, notorious for being copycats to successful outreach and visibility projects, has caught onto the idea of public art. The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation is starting with a few hundred 8-foot Space Shuttle statues, to be sponsored and creatively dressed up. The Shuttles Orbiting the Space Coast project launched on June 19, 2008. Completed shuttles will be displayed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in November 2008. After that, the shuttles will go to the sponsor’s desired public locations for approximately 8 months.

Artists apply here!

Moon’s Mini Modern Art Museum

karenlau — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:37:57 +0000

Guerrilla style, artist Forrest “Frosty” Myers stowed modern art on a lunar lander to the moon, in 1969. S contemporary artists in the Apollo days—Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, Forrest “Frosty” Myers, Claes Oldenburg, and John Chamberlain—contributed a drawing each which were “miniaturized and baked onto an iridium-plated ceramic wafer measuring just 3/4″ x 1/2″ x 1/40″, with the assistance of engineers at Bell Labs.” Naturally NASA would reject a cool idea like that, which led Myers to secretly collaborate with an anonymous Northrop Grumman engineer who secretly installed the “museum” on a hatch on a leg of the Intrepid landing module. Some say that Warhol’s drawing was a squiggle of his initials but others say it’s his penis. Art is objective.

Astronaut/artist also left behind several rolls of undeveloped film on the lunar surface. Who knows what radiation has done to the film, but it would be great to get them processed and see what Bean documented. Humans like to mark their territory, and artists do it with their work.

More details:

Sergey Brin, Space Tourist + Google CoFounder

karenlau — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:17:21 +0000

In a recent article via the New York Times, Sergey Brin has announced plans to fly aboard the Soyuz, to get to the ISS and hang out there while he conjours new technology and direction for Google while casually observing the Earth from above. There are concerns that if anything happens to Brin, that Google would be in trouble. It’s part of life—risk. Being a seasoned entrepreneur, there’s always more untrod ground to break. Perhaps, via the overview effect, Sergey will have ideas of lunar archiving or intergalactic search engine optimizations, that can really propel humanity forward faster and longer.