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Rethinking the limits of creative expression
The Beyond Earth artist collective finished a piece of artwork dubbed "Living Light" over the summer. A statement from the artists said the artwork "combines biology with artificial intelligence and aerospace technology" and "explores the connections between our blue planet and the boundlessness of outer space. On the 18th of June, they launched a craft called "Neptune One" and carried the artwork nearly 30.5 kilometers (19 miles) into Earth's stratosphere, the farthest point on the planet.
As one of the three artists who created this work, Richelle Gribble, who is also the co-founder of Beyond Earth and the director of the gallery Supercollider, told Space.com, "by sending artworks to space, that really enables us to rethink the bounds of creative expression." "Moreover, when it goes beyond our planet's boundaries, it demonstrates the creativity's ability to be something that always tests the limits and forces us to reevaluate what art is and how it is created.
The largest art installation to ever travel to space
According to a press release, this first test flight for Neptune One "marked a major step towards flying customers to space. ". "Beyond Earth's art installation Living Light transformed the capsule of Neptune One. Living Light, the largest art installation ever to travel into space, took on the appearance of a jellyfish while echoing the shape of the capsule that will one day carry explorers into space. An additional benefit of the installation was to highlight the interdependency of all living organisms, particularly the hidden ocean life that is rarely mentioned in the history of life on Earth.
Gribble is one of Beyond Earth has members. Along with Shimizu, the group includes artists Elena Soterakis, a curator and educator who founded the BioBAT Art Space gallery in New York, as well as Yoko Shimizu, a biochemist, and artist at Ars Electronica Futurelab in Austria.
Space Perspective, a Florida-based company that designed the "Spaceship Neptune," a pressurized balloon-lofted capsule capable of carrying up to eight passengers and one pilot to 100,000 feet, worked with the trio to create this collaborative launch (30.5 km). Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, the company's original "biospherians," founded it recently. Biosphere 2 was the dome habitat where Poynter and MacCallum spent about two years each.
Jellyfish-like shape and transparency
For their first flight, they asked us to design the entire capsule structure, Gribble said to Space.com. According to Gribble, the Neptune craft is "about the size of a football field," and it took six hours to fly the artwork to its highest point. The ship takes its name from the Roman sea god, and the artistic trio was inspired by that fact. For that reason, we wanted to make a design that was a continuation of the theme. According to one researcher, "so we began to really dive into looking at the ocean biome, looking at water, and properties of species that live near the Florida Space Coast."
The artwork, which has a jellyfish-like shape and transparency, immediately draws the attention of viewers who have never seen it before. However, jellyfish aren't the only animals depicted in this work of art. According to Gribble, "we decided to design a structure that is a composite of more than 1,000 different aquatic species, to celebrate the biodiversity of marine ecosystems. A giant colorful jellyfish-shaped work of art in space, on the other hand, must be able to withstand the harsh conditions of launch, spaceflight and landing.
A structure capable of withstanding a landing at sea
Gribble explained that designing for space alters the way you view materials. It's up to "To deal with the payload limitations, it must be made as light as possible. Most people aren't aware, but outer space is incredibly cold. As a result, no materials can be used that are too brittle, break easily, or absorb an excessive amount of UV light. Thus, even the colors we chose to reflect light in order to protect the art sculpture had to be reflective." However, these were far from the only hurdles that the design team had to overcome in order to create art that would last in space. Gribble made the additional point of saying "One of the most important aspects of the project was considering the impact it will have once it reaches the ocean. So, how to create this structure so it's resilient enough to not leave any kind of debris behind."
For future exhibitions and projects, the team wanted the structure to be able to withstand an ocean landing. However, Gribble emphasized that they also wanted to make certain that they were doing everything possible to avoid dumping waste or debris into the ocean. At the HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) research station in Hawaii, Gribble tested a small prototype of the art installation during an analog Mars mission in 2020. For the record, I was on Gribble's analog Mars mission.
"This miniscule sculpture was on hand for Gribble to document and photograph as it flew through the habitat on the Martian surface during the HI-SEAS simulation. And the purpose of this exercise was to generate ideas about what it means to create artworks and art objects specifically for use in outer space." However, this "jellyfish" wasn't created, tested, and launched into orbit on its own. It had help along the way. A DNA-encoded capsule was also included in the package.
According to a statement from Space Perspective, "the DNA capsule launched on Neptune One inside Living Light was composed of three art pieces by each of the Beyond Earth artists." It was converted to DNA and stored in a metal vial with an artistic message to space in a message called "To Space, from Earth."
Selena Mattei