Space Has Arrived | Space Exploration Initiative at Ars Electronica 2020
If nothing else, 2020 has lifted the veil, and a comprehensive global crisis is now drowning in humanity’s collective awareness. Confronted with the urgency of our planetary predicament, we revisit Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, a reminder that Earth is a spaceship with finite supplies and collaboration is the key to our collective future. We are at a crossroads, having simultaneously gained the potential to destroy all life to extinction and acquired the skills to fulfill the basic survival needs of all humanity.
This year, we join Ars Electronica In Kepler's garden online program, a collective effort among the global to reconnect. We created a digital spaceship to share the diverse portfolio from the Initiative. Audiences are invited to immerse themselves in this digital world, walk around and encounter each other.
At the Space Exploration Initiative, we are creating and deploying space technologies that envision a bold and culturally rich “new space age,” from astro-bacterial wearables, to open-access and shareable CubeSat constellations, through musical instruments for our space voyages and floating space habitats. The philosophy of “democratizing access to space exploration”—bringing moonshots and starshots into the purview of hackers and makers—courses through our work, and guides both our research platform and our extensive STEAM outreach efforts.
We will invite the public to engage with the imaginative, critical conversations on our planetary future through three workshop events. We will also feature an exhibition on Sojourner2020, the first international art open call that took a trip to the International Space Station this March. Sojourner2020 is created by an unprecedented collection of international artists, bringing in knowledge from indigenous groups, queer communities and diverse cultures, as well as transdisciplinary perspectives.
The Sojourner 2020 artists:
Luis Guzman - bioarchitectures - Chile
https://www.guzmanluis.com/bioarchitectures
Lucia Monge, Xin Liu - Unearthing the Futures - China & Peru
https://www.unearthingfutures.org
Andrea Ling - Abiogenetic Triptych - USA, Canada
http://andreasling.com/abiogenetic-triptych
Kat Kohl - Memory Chain: A Pas de Deux of Artifact - USA
Henry Tan - Pearl of Lunar - Thai
https://www.henryandpartners.com/merchants-trinity-2/pearl-of-lunar/
Janet Biggs - Finding Equilibrium - USA
https://www.janetbiggsfilm.com/
Masahito Ono - Nothing, Something, Everything - Japan
Adriana Knouf - TX-1 - USA
https://tranxxenolab.net/projects/tx-1/
Erin Genia - Canupa Inyan: Falling Star Woman - American Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate