Michael Markowsky's dream is to make a painting while standing on the surface of the moon. He will accomplish this dream by January 1, 2030.

Did you know that many artists have already sent artwork into space, and done artwork while in a low-earth orbit? It is true!

Please leave comments on the blog at http://markowsky.blogspot.com/
Any other questions, please send an e-mail to mmarkowsky@hotmail.com

First of all, What is ‘Space Art’?

I've tried my best, through my research to come up with as concise as possible of a history of Space Art as possible. I've also included some projects that were proposed but did not occur for one reason or another. Some projects that seem relative to the discussion have also been included, even though they do not technically fall under the widely accepted definition of Space Art. I have excerpted such a defininition below, from Richard Clar’s website:

"Roger F. Malina, Astrophysicist and Executive Editor of Leonardo: The Journal of Art, Science, and Technology defines the term “Space Art” as: “Contemporary art which relies on space activity for its implementation." He lists seven broad categories:

1.Fine art which exploits sensory experiences generated through space exploration. New landscapes become accessible through space photography and film. Space illustrators anticipated some of these. and make use of the photographic record from space exploration.

2. Art which expresses the new psychological and philosophical conceptions developed through the exploration of space. The primary example of this is the concept of the Earth as a whole system - a concept made concrete by the first views of the whole Earth seen from space.

3. Art in space, viewed from Earth.

4. Art on Earth, viewed from space.

5. Art in space, viewed in space.

6. The applied arts such as space architecture, interior design and furniture design.

7. Fine art which takes advantage of new technologies and materials created through space activities. The most important of these make use of satellite systems to create simultaneous global artworks."

1965 – “Jingle Bells” played by Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford

Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford played "Jingle Bells" with a harmonica and bells during a broadcast to Earth near Christmas time 1965, on the Gemini 6 mission (December 15-16, 1965)

It was the 5th manned Gemini flight, the 13th manned American flight and the 21st spaceflight of all time (includes X-15 flights over 100 km -- 62 miles). Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 had just preformed the first 'rendezvous' in space, and at one point orbited the earth within a foot of one another. This achievement was the equivalent of having two bullets fired from two seperate guns at different times from different directions meet up and fly side by side.

Before re-entry, the crew of Gemini 6 made this surprise announcement;

“Gemini 7, this is Gemini 6. We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south, probably in polar orbit…. Looks like he might be going to reenter soon. Stand by one…. You just might let me to pick up that thing…. I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit." [Next, the sound of a harmonica and bells can be heard, playing 'Jingle Bells']

The Smithsonian claims these were the first musical instruments played in space and keeps the instruments on display.

1969 – “Moon Museum” by Forrest Myers (with Warhol, Rauschenberg, Novros, Chamberlain and Oldenburg)

American artist Forrest (Frosty) Myers claimed to have secretly had a tiny ceramic tile glued onto the hatch of a leg of the Apollo 12 Lunar Lander. The iridium-plated wafer measured only 3/4" x 1/2" x 1/40" with drawings made by Forrest Myers, Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, David Novros, and John Chamberlain.

If this is true, it would have been the first artwork to appear on the surface of the moon. The Intrepid Lunar Lander touched down on the moon, November 19, 1969. Despite the fact that the astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr (commander), Richard F. Gordon, Jr. (command module pilot) and Alan L. Bean (lunar module pilot) returned to earth on November 24, the lander and the artwork remain on the moon. Myers revealed the exhibition's existence to the New York Times, which published the story Nov. 22, 1969, two days after the Apollo 12 crew had left the moon--and the Intrepid--and two days before they arrived back on earth.

In addition to the six drawings, the 'Moon Museum' also acquired a large collection of photographs; astronaut Alan Bean accidentally left several rolls of undeveloped film behind on the lunar surface.

As the NASA spokesman told the Times when asked about the Museum infiltration, "I don't know about it. If we had been asked, it sounds like something we'd have very much interested in [sic]. If it is true that they've succeeded in doing it by some clandestine means, I hope that the work represents the best in contemporary American art."

The following is excerpted from a conversation with Amy Waldhauer:

"Believe it. My father was an engineer who worked with artists, though his day job was with AT&T Bell Labs. His lab designed integrated circuits (these were the first chips) so he got the drawings from the artists, shrank them down, made a silk screen and printed the images on silicon wafers. His crew made 40 of them and then they broke the mold. One chip got onto the lunar lander and the rest are scattered around. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has one. When they acknowledged the gift, they noted that it is "the smallest print in our collection...

...The artist who conceived of the project was Forrest (Frosty) Myers. He asked a number of artists to contribute drawings and five -- Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenberg, Robert Novros, and John Chamberlain -- gave him one. Myers added one of his own, then contacted my father for help. My father made the chips and contacted another engineer who worked on the lunar lander. That other engineer, Robert Merkle [Grumman Corporation], somehow attached the chip to the leg of the lunar lander. And, in the picture my father's thumb obscures Andy Warhol's picture because the genteel NY Times did not want to print it. It looks like a penis.

The artworks are, clockwise from the top left: Warhol's doodle of a penis, Rauschenberg's wavy line; Novros' black square bisected by thin white lines, a computer-generated drawing by Myers; a geometric mouse by Oldenburg, and a template pattern by Chamberlain.

An Interesting side note is that at a Space themed conference called 'Space Soon' in London in 2006, Alan Bean (one of the astronauts aboard the Apollo 12 flight, "who now makes paintings that attempt to bring to life that elusive experience") hosted a presentation called "SECRET ARTIST ON THE MOON – APOLLO ASTRONAUT ALAN BEAN." Why would Alan Bean describe himself (or allow himself to be described) as a ‘secret artist on the moon’? Was he in on the 'Moon Museum'?

1971 – Golf on the Moon and first ‘Lunar Olympics’ – First performance art on moon?

Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the Apollo program and the third mission to land on the Moon. The 9 day mission was launched on January 31 1971, with lunar touch down on February 5.

Commander Alan Shepard famously hit two golf balls on the lunar surface with a make-shift club he had brought from Earth. Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa took several hundred seeds on the mission, many of which were germinated on return resulting in the so called Moon trees. Edgar Mitchell then used a lunar scoop handle as a javelin, creating the first 'Lunar Olympics'.

1971 – “Fallen Astronaut” Lunar Memorial by Paul Van Hoeydonck

A Dutch artist, Paul Van Hoeydonck worked with NASA to produce a small monument left on the moon by the Apollo 15 in 1971. Titled "The Fallen Astronaut," the satin-finished milled-aluminum figurine was placed on the lunar surface next to the rover, a short walk from the Hadley-Apennine landing site by American astronaut Dave Scott, with a plaque listing all of the astronauts and cosmonauts who had died during previous space missions.

Hoeydonck subsequently tried to sell 950 copies of the sculpture through his gallery in New York, which surprised and upset NASA. Although Hoeydonck eventually withdrew the artworks from sale, it is thought that this is one of the main reasons that NASA has been skeptical of working with artists to this day.

NASA rules barr payloads that "appear to be proposed...primarily for the purposes of... publicity [and] promotion." This shows there are limits to what NASA will tolerate in the way of orbiting attention-grabbers - though there's no prohibition in the rules against payloads being launched for financial gain.

"We began to look seriously at developing a nonscientific payload policy because of inquiries from members of the arts community," recalls Tony Maull, the evaluation committee's executive secretary. "People like Joe Davis and Lowry Burgess and others who were using very modern materials and techniques. We saved all of these proposals, waiting for the day when we finally got the shuttle operating and on a reliable schedule, and as that day approached, we went through our files and tried to figure out how we could best accommodate the people who wanted to send up nonscientific payloads. We really had mainly artists in mind, because their representations had been the most vigorous and the best thought-out...

"I think that all of us at NASA are clearly aware that what motivates the American people to support the space program - and it is their program, not a hobbyshop for us - isn't just for the reasons of science and engineering, but perhaps as important, for the reasons of poetry, the spirit of adventure. We're moved to be off [the Earth] for reasons that are probably harder for engineers to understand than for artists. We're not going to get involved with judgments of artistic merit. We just want people to know that the door is open now for concerns that go beyond science and engineering."

Another controversy erupted after the return of Apollo 15. Astronaut Dave Scott had carried 398 unauthorized First-Day Covers in his spacesuit. Businessman H. Walter Eiermann had promised each astronaut US$7,000 in the form of savings accounts in return for 100 covers signed after having returned from the Moon. He told them that he would not advertise or sell the covers until the end of the Apollo program. Irwin wrote in his book "To Rule the Night" that the astronauts had agreed to the deal as a way to help finance their children's college tuition.

Scott sent 100 of these covers to Eiermann to Stuttgart, Germany. Eiermann then passed them on to the stamp dealer Herman E. Sieger from Lorch, Germany, who had previously approached him and had suggested the deal. Sieger proceeded to sell the covers for an average price of US$1,500 in a public sale in Germany. On hearing these news, Scott contacted Eiermann, asking him to stop the sale. The crew also decided against receiving any money from Eiermann. NASA took possession of the remaining 298 covers.

All three crew members were formally reprimanded and their personnel evaluation Officer Efficiency Reports were changed to reflect a formal finding of "lack of judgment." Worden was reassigned within NASA from flight status. Scott was not reassigned. He had already begun working on the design of the docking module for the upcoming ASTP mission when the cover scandal broke.[3] Irwin resigned to form "High Flight", a christian outreach ministry based in Colorado. Congressional questioning of NASA officials about the "Stamp Affair" caused further embarrassment for the agency as the Apollo program wound down.

Another minor controversy centered around two timepieces, a watch and stopwatch, carried by Scott. He had agreed to evaluate the timepieces for the manufacturer at the request of a friend. Thinking they might be useful, particularly for the possible timing of a manually controlled emergency propulsion maneuver, Scott took them along on the mission without prior authorization.

1977 – Voyager Golden Record

The two Voyager probes were launched in 1977 on a trip to all the outer planets except Pluto. The probes, which are still in contact with earth, have now traveled past Pluto's orbit and will travel through interstellar space forever.

Carl Sagan organized an effort to attached a combination time-capsule and message-in-a-bottle for any extraterrestrial civilization that might come across the probes or for a future human starship that caught up with it.

A 12 inch gold plated record along with a stylus and instructions for playing it were included. The digital data on the record contains images, greetings in 55 languages, sounds, and music that represent the best of earth and humanity.

The Golden Record page at JPL gives details about the Golden Record along with clips of the sounds and the music. Voyager Golden Record | Planet Earth website offers all of the audio clips and images that were placed on the disks. http://www.goldenrecord.org/ NOTE: requires a fast computer with the latest Flash plug-in.

Mid 1980’s – John Denver’s attempts to become an astronaut

John Denver was a strong supporter of space exploration and even attempted to arrange a ride into space aboard the shuttle and on Mir. Denver proposed to the Soviet space agency to give, in exchange for a flight, "the Soviets full commercial rights to an album he planned to record, some of it in space and some of it on Earth with music he composed from the inspiration of his experiences." However, the Soviets demanded full payment for the flight up front. (Some Russian officials later mis-characterized Denver's offer as "trying to pay for the flight with a song".)

Denver apparently was also in line for NASA's Citizen in Space program until it was canceled after the Challenger disaster. According to a message from Joe Ellis, Denver wrote the song "Flying For Me" (on the album One World, 1986) about the Challenger disaster. "Only time I've ever seen/heard it was a performance with the Boston Pops, on PBS.”

  Well, I guess that you probably know by now
   I was one who wanted to fly
   I wanted to ride on that arrow of fire right up into heaven
   And I wanted to go for every man Every child,
   every mother of children.
   I wanted to carry the dreams of all people right up to the stars.

  They were flying for me
  They were flying for every one
  They were trying to see a brighter day for each and every one
  They gave us their light
  They gave us their spirit and all they could be
  They were flying for me

1982-1986 – “Space Flight Dolphin” by Richard Clar (‘approved’ but did not occur – proposed)

Artist Richard Clar conceived Space Flight Dolphin (SFD) in 1982. Approved by NASA, SFD is an interdisciplinary art-in-space SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project designed to be deployed in low-Earth orbit from the cargo bay of the U.S. Space Shuttle. The dolphin sculpture/satellite will transmit a signal modulated by dolphin “voices” that may be detected or sensed by an extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). As the sculpture/satellite orbits the Earth, the dolphin voices will be monitored in various museums around the World and on the Internet, providing a link between different peoples and cultures on our own planet. Space Flight Dolphin adds to the history of human beings communicating through art with symbols that transcend the boundaries of time and culture.

An inflatable dolphin sculpture/satellite (Fig. 1) will be deployed from the cargo bay of the U.S. Space Shuttle into low earth orbit. After deployment, Space Flight Dolphin will transmit a signal modulated by dolphin "voices" that may be detected or sensed by extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI). As the sculpture/satellite orbits the Earth, the dolphin voices will be monitored in various museums around the world, providing a link between different people and cultures on our own planet. Space Flight Dolphin will add to the history of human beings communicating through art with symbols that transcend the boundaries of time and culture.

“I received a letter, dated 18 April 1986, approving the concept of my project from Clarke Prouty, Acting Manager of the GAS program at NASA headquarters.”

A small sculpture/satellite designed to be deployed into low-Earth orbit from the cargo bay of the U.S. Space Shuttle. (NASA - Get Away Special (GAS) payload #445).

Richard Clar, a Los Angeles interdisciplinary artist, founded Art Technologies in 1987 as a liaison between the worlds of art and technology. His philosophically-oriented artwork turned towards art-in- space in 1982 with a NASA-approved art payload for the U.S. Space Shuttle.

1984 – First jazz solo in space by Ronald E. McNair.

Astronaut Ron McNair was the second person to take a musical instrument into space and play it (after the harmonica and bells on Gemini 6). He brought along his saxophone on shuttle flight STS-41B in February 1984 and made a tape recording of his playing while floating in the Challenger's mid-deck. Unfortunately, the tape was later accidentally recorded over.

McNair died in the Challenger explosion several years later. During the flight he had planned to play a work composed for him by Jean-Michel Jarre. It would have been the first musical piece whose debut occurred in space. The piece later appeared on Jarre's album Rendezvous with the sax played by Pierre Gossez. (Track 6 - "Last Rendez-Vous")

1984 – “S.P.A.C.E.” – first artwork created in space, by Joseph McShane

The sculpture "S.P.A.C.E." by American artist Joseph McShane, was the first artwork created outside the Earth. McShane's work was launched into space on October 5, 1984 aboard the U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger. McShane’s piece was produced with the vacuum of space and the conditions of zero gravity and returned to Earth in its altered state. A sphere with a valve and earth atmosphere within was opened once in orbit. The vacuum of space evacuated the sphere, the valve was closed, and the vacuum of space was then contained within. For McShane, the artwork is not the glass object per se, but the containment of outer space within, the potential wonder generated by bringing space vacuum to Earth and to close proximity to viewers. The question concerning the reception of space art necessarily involves a reflection on the experience of it in space.

Just after 7 a.m. on October 5, 1984, the space shuttle Challenger blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. As usual, it had a variety of payloads in its cargo bay, including a trash-can sized canister mounted unobtrusively along a side wall. Known to the flight crew simply as "Payload G-38," this padded aluminum cylinder held the elements of the first sculpture to be fabricated in space.

Among other things, G-38 contained a clear glass globe about 14 inches in diameter, fitted with a flexible stainless-steel tube and a valve. It left the Earth filled with 22 liters of sea-level air at sea-level pressure. In orbit, the valve was opened for several days by the payload's control system to establish equilibrium between the globe and its environment. The sphere came back to Earth with 22 liters of ultra-thin upper atmosphere. Now permanently sealed, it is attached to a vacuum gauge with digital readout. The gauge is sensitive enough to show moment-to-moment changes in the pressure-difference between the space vacuum inside and the atmosphere outside pressing against the sphere.

Joseph McShane, the artist responsible for Payload G-38, says, "The sculpture then is not the glass, but the outer space contained within. The sphere serves only to keep the one-g Earth atmosphere from intruding." Its presence gives the air around it presence by contrast.

Best images on the web of McShane’s Project:
http://www.volny.cz/rhorvitz/Artspace.html

1984: Joseph McShane’s Get Away Special (GAS) (G-308) which contained a system of spheres used as a materials coating experiment, originally conceived of and viewed as artworks upon return to Earth. McShane stated: “The sculpture “S.P.A.C.E.” is not the glass, but the outer space contained within. The sphere serves only to keep the one-g atmosphere from intruding on the space within, creating an anomaly of our common experience; a sculpture to observe and stimulate wonder about the nature and meaning of space, a sculpture to touch and know that only an 1/8″ of glass separates one from space.” (NASA, 1994)”.

1985 – “New Wave Ruby Falls” by Joe Davis (did not occur)

(attempted but never flew because of challenger disaster) - A different daring space sculpture project is planned for launch early next year. Joe Davis, a fellow at MIT's Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and colleague Eric Begleiter, intend to orbit a high-power electron gun in an attempt to create an artificial aurora. The device is now being built with help from MIT's High Voltage Research Laboratory. The equipment is donated by a growing list of small high-tech companies. If all goes as planned, a narrow ten-kilowatt beam of electrons will shoot down from the shuttle's cargo bay nearly a hundred miles to the denser layers of the ionosphere, causing them to glow. There are still too many unknowns to predict how this will look from the ground, but it may resemble a faint, streaky, luminous cloud that brightens and fades with the pulsing of the beam. It would only be visible at night, of course, in clear, dark skies along the shuttle's flight path. Davis calls the project New Wave Ruby Falls - alluding to Ruby Falls, Tennessee, site of an artificially-lit underground waterfall advertised as a tourist attraction on roads throughout the South.

Artificial aurorae have been created before, using rockets to release chemicals in the upper atmosphere, and the shuttle has already flown large electron guns for other purposes. But Davis' proposal is quite novel. Most space researchers initially doubted that it was even possible. That he has been able to convince so many that it is not only possible, but environmentally safe and scientifically worthwhile, is testimony to his persistence, and to the magic of the idea itself. Ruby Falls fires the imagination of many people and has gotten a fair amount of media coverage. This has been essential to the project, attracting donations of equipment, skills and labor from those inspired by what Davis is trying to do. (If you are so inspired, you can contact him c/o the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, 40 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139.)

Davis has another, less dramatic payload, LightFlight, which is being put together by students at the Rhode Island School of Design, and which may fly before Ruby Falls. A small but very bright strobe-light, mounted in a GAS [Get-Away Special: see WER #45, page 26] canister, will be aimed down at the Earth. The purpose of the investigation is to try to resolve uncertainty about the minimum point-brightness that can be seen by the unaided human eye, and to test the practicality of using this kind of lamp for optical signalling from the orbitting shuttle to observers on the ground. A subsequent mission would have the light beam modulated with slow-scan television images, and eventually he hopes to flight-test a two-way Earth/orbit light link.

To be able to work in space, Davis, like McShane, has had to cast his art in the mold of science in order to qualify for the GAS program. Davis says, "NASA would neither qualify nor disqualify a project simply because it contained or pertained to a work of art, though clearly if the artistic and scientific aspects of such a payload could be at all separated, then NASA would fly the science and not the art. Here integration of the sensibilities was as important as integration of the hardware."

Since Davis and McShane both want their work to "integrate the sensibilities" anyway, this has not been a problem for them. But not everyone shares this aim. What about those who would like to use space for creative projects that are not even remotely scientific?

1987 – Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko writes 20 songs on Mir

In February 1987 cosmonaut Aleksandr Laveikin brought his acoustic guitar with him to the Mir space station. While there he taught Yuri Romanenko how to play and left it with him. The guitar remained on Mir and later cosmonauts Gennady Strekalov and Talgat Musabayev played it. Musabayev played it once on a live downlink to a song contest, which gave him a special prize.

During a 326 day stay on Mir from February 5, 1987 to December 29, 1988, Romanenko wrote 20 songs. They were "optimistic songs, written by a man who feels good." according to this article: Cosmonaut sees no limit to space visit length - Houston Chronicle - Jan.21.88.

Barnaby says he is trying to get Romanenko, who lives in Star City near Moscow, to come to London to record the songs but they haven't yet managed to arrange his trip.

1989 – “Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture” by Lowry Burgess

Lowry Burgess flew objects on the Shuttle as part of a conceptual artwork entitled Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture. However, none of these works were created specifically to investigate the new possibilities of art in true weightlessness.

Consider Lowry Burgess (head of the graduate program at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston and also a fellow at MIT CAVS). For years he has been trying to get permission from NASA to put a piece called The Gate Into Aether over the Pacific:

"The Gate Into Aether is a ring form of ice consisting of 18 sections of frozen waters taken from the mouths of 18 great rivers throughout the world (Mississippi, Congo, Columbia, Ganges, St. Lawrence, Danube, Rio Grande, Indus, Rhine, Tigris-Euphrates, Amazon, Yang Tzu, etc.). These rivers are combined in pairs with other waters from springs, waterfalls, geysers, glaciers and wells... between each of the frozen sections are sonic holograms (wave fronts of sound captured in light) of the ecstatic singing of plants, animals, and people."

As Burgess envisions it, the ice-ring, measuring about 18 inches in diameter, would be taken out of a refrigerated container by a shuttle crew-member and gently placed over the Pacific by hand: a crowning. The ice would sublime (evaporate without melting), leaving the holograms to flutter down into the atmosphere like leaves, burning completely during re-entry:

"As if animated by a surprising impulse waters were from all over the world... gathered face to face and mouth to mouth: memory of the world as water...welded by a chill rapture of song lifted into high and absolute silence at the rim of the world...released, sublimed as crystals, as the sun scatters the starry night in a diasporal seeding of the streams in air, an infinitessimal rain..."

Until recently, NASA forbade the deployment of solid objects from GAS canisters, even when they were sure to disintegrate quickly. (That's one reason why Davis chose to work with electromagnetic rays, and McShane, sampling containers.) More to the point, Burgess sees the gesture of placement by a human hand as important to the symbolism of his piece. But NASA won't allow any extravehicular-activity time to be spent in support of a GAS payload. Even if they did, he would still have to convince them that the ice ring can be safely handled and deployed. That may be harder than it sounds: unless all gases dissolved in the waters are purged before freezing, it could erupt when exposed to sunlight and vacuum, hurling the sharp-edged holograms every which-way. Careful engineering can probably dispel the safety issues. The main problem, though, has been that The Gate Into Aether just isn't scientific or technical research by any stretch of the imagination. Rather than disguise that fact, or redefine the project to fit the requirements of the GAS program, Burgess has been trying to get NASA to change its policies to allow the shuttles to carry nonscientific payloads. On August 31, 1984, they did so.

Under the new rules, nonscientific payloads are eligible for flight on a "space available" basis - that is, after all scientific and technical payloads have been accommodated. Formal flight requests must be accompanied by a processing fee of $1000. They're first screened for safety, feasibility, compliance with regulations, etc., then must be approved by a Nonscientific Payload Evaluation Committee composed of high-level NASA administrators. The basic flight fare is just under $1500/pound, plus "integration" fees figured on a case-by-case basis for handling, installation, etc.

From the Federal Register (August 31, 1984, pages 34445-34447):

    "No payload will be accepted for flight which is inconsistent with NASA's mission or otherwise not in the national interest. No human or animal life will be permitted in a nonscientific payload. Nonscientific payloads will not be permitted as free flyers (untethered satellites)... all nonscientific payloads will be returned to Earth aboard the same [Space Transport System] flights that carry them into orbit...

    "NASA specifically reserves the right to reject nonscientific payloads proposed - or which appear to be proposed - solely or primarily for the purpose of advertising, publicity, endorsements, or other means of promotion."

These rules still preclude work like "The Gate Into Aether": nothing solid can be left in orbit. "In addition," says NASA,"we do not wish to increase the number of space objects that re-enter Earth's atmosphere."

Recently, however, Burgess filed a flight request for another piece called "The Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture." This one does not require waiver of any regulations or pose safety problems. Approved by the committee this past spring and tentatively scheduled to fly by the end of the year, it will be the shuttle's first fare-paying nonscientific payload.

The form and symbolism of "The Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture" are too complex to describe here in full, but the basic structure is that of two sets of boxes-within-boxes - one to be installed near the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the other to be put someday in the crater Korolev, on the far side of the moon. The two sets refer to each other by approximately inverting each other's nesting order. The outer surface of the terrestrial set is tiled with small blocks of bronze, blue pearl granite, and smokey lead glass; the inner-most cube is a vacuum lined with "holograms of nothing" (six exposed but blank glass plates). The innermost cube of the lunar set will be made of the bronze, granite and glass blocks; its outer surface, exposed to the lunar vacuum, will be covered with holograms of visionary scenes: a foot splashing in water, a hand metamorphosing into a tree covered with wings instead of leaves.

Only the 5" x 5" x 5" core of the Earthly set will fly on the shuttle, says Burgess: "a cubic pressure chamber which contains all the chemical elements: solid, liquid, and gaseous. This chamber also contains the purified waters of 'The Gate Into Aether.' In this pressurized and elemental vice floats a further cubic vessel framed with its six holograms of nothing: a cubic vacuum."

When the core returns from orbit, the remainder of the terrestrial piece will be built around it. Completely assembled, it will be embedded in an outcropping of 300-million-year-old rock a few miles from Walden Pond. (The crater Korolev was chosen as the complementary site because some of the moon's oldest rock is thought to be exposed there.)

Burgess' work is closer in spirit to alchemy than to science, a kind of material poetry. There is no logical justification for its soon-to-be-unseen heart to spend a week in orbit before being interred, but each component of the "Aperture" has undergone a processing ritual in an appropriate, usually out-of-the-way, place: the waters from "The Gate Into Aether" were distilled on the edge of the Dead Sea, the "holograms of nothing" were exposed in a cold, lightless cave under the crater of an extinct volcano. The ride into space will link the inside of the terrestrial cube to the outside of the lunar cube. "The Aperture," says Burgess, is "a labyrinthian keyhole through Void, framed in fractured and fused cancellations, a dread knot." Arcane, serendipitous, it represents a kind of thinking that NASA has never been able to accommodate before, but which in fact imposes very little burden on their operations.

McShane, Davis and Burgess have not run into any problems with NASA on the issues of personal gain and publicity stemming from their spacework. This is a subject on which the agency is known to be sensitive, however. One incident in particular made them wary.

POSTSCRIPT: In January 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just after launch, killing all of those on board. NASA suspended all shuttle flights until 1988, and when they resumed, public access to shuttle services was very limited. In March 1989, Lowry Burgess' Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture was the first - and only - nonscientific payload launched under the rules described in this article. Joe Davis' payloads never flew.

1993 – “The Cosmic Dancer” by Arthur Woods

The Cosmic Dancer, by Arthur Woods, an American artist living in Switzerland. The primary viewers for The Cosmic Dancer lived with the "terrors and pleasures of levitation" in conditions of zero gravity. A sharp-angled form launched to the Mir Space Station on May 22, 1993, The Cosmic Dancer stressed the cultural dimension of space since it created the experience of art integrated into a human environment beyond Earth. The video that documents the project shows the two Russian cosmonauts Alexander Polischuk and Gennadi Mannakov performing (rotating, hovering, flying) with the sculpture in the confines of Mir, where the sculpture was left. The flaming remnants of the Mir space station plunged into the South Pacific on 23 March, 2002.

Cosmonauts Gennadi Manakov and Alexander Polischuk
Cosmic Dancer mission rehersal in Star City, Russia, 1993

Excerpt from interview with CNN Art Club
Report shown on CNN's Millenniumm Week-end 2000.

Best images on the net:
http://www.tate.org.uk/space/spaceart.htm

1993 – "The Zero-Gravity Project" by Niu Bo

Chinese artist Niu Bo started "The Zero-Gravity Project", which he first pursued in Japan with a plane that flies in parabolic arcs at 20,000-25,000 ft. Bo covered the interior of the plane with rice paper and used a paint produced from the mixture of several elements. To create this paint the artist combined China ink, watercolor, and oil, among other materials, and placed the paint in balloons. During the near weightlessness of microgravity flights, he released the paint. With his "Space Atelier" Bo wishes to convey that just as the Impressionists had to leave their studios to explore the possibilities of natural light, a new culture will be created when artists leave the surface of the Earth.

1993 – Susan Helms playes keyboard on the Space Shuttle

Susan, see above photo, played her keyboard during STS-54 in January 1993.

1993 – Ellen Ochoa plays flute aboard the Space Shuttle

Ellen played her flute on the shuttle mission STS-56 in April 1993.

Other musicial achievements in Sapce:

Thomas Reiter / Euromir
Chris Hadfield brought a collapsible guitar along with him on STS-74 to present to ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter living on Mir.

Yuri Romanenko - Writing Music in Space
Barnaby Oliver of the band Venus Ray is producing an album based on music written in space by cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko.

http://hobbyspace.com/Music/index.html#NASAMusic

1995 – Ars Ad Astra: The First Art Exhibition in Earth Orbit on the Mir Space Station

In 1995 a space art project was organized by the Swiss based OURS Foundation, in cooperation with the European Space Agency for the first art exhibition to take place beyond Earth. After holding an international competition, twenty original art works were selected by a jury of art and space experts for an exhibition on the Mir space station during the EUROMIR 95 mission.

In addition, one artwork from each artist participating in the project was digitized and installed on a portable computer that accompanied German cosmonaut Thomas Reiter on his record breaking mission.

The theme of the exhibition was "Space and Humanity". The artists were challenged to make "space qualified" artworks that were lightweight and used no toxic materials. Each artwork was carried out on paper that measured 21 x 30 cm.

On space station Mir, the cosmonaut crew consisting of Thomas Reiter and his two Russian colleagues Sergeij Avdeev and Yuri Gidzenko picked the artwork they liked best from the twenty orginals. This artwork, a watercolor by the American artist Elisabeth Carol Smith called "When Dreams are Born" was kept on the Mir station.
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On September 3, 1995, 20 works of art on the theme "Space & Humanity" that were selected through an international competition accompanied the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Reiter to the Mir space station on his 180 day EUROMIR 95 mission. Ars ad Astra represents the first time in histroy that artists have been invited to have their art works exhibited in space.

Thomas Reiter and his two Russians colleagues Sergei Avdeev and Yuri Ghidzenko had the task of deciding which of the twenty art works best fulfilled the theme of the project. After more than one week of deliberations the cosmonauts made their difficult decision. They first narrowed down their choice to ten artworks then to just three. The painting they liked the best was "When Dreams Are Born" by Elisabeth Carroll Smith.

The decision was announced during a live 20 minute video link-up with the Mir station on November 30, 1995 as a part of ESA's "Art & Space" event which was hosted by the Euro Space Center in Transinne, Belgium.

http://www.arsadastra.com/
http://www.arsadastra.com/a1.html

1995-2005 – Kitsou Dubois choreography experiments

French choreographer and dancer Kitsou Dubois has been investigating how low gravity can add dimensions to her medium. Over the past decade she has flown, sometimes with a team of performers, on a dozen or so parabolic flights to experience weightless dancing.

1998 – “Research Project Number 33” by Frank Pietronigro

Research Project Number 33 was an interdisciplinary action that bridged the sensibility of the artist with the technology of space flight. On 4 April 1998, I (Frank Pietronigro) flew aboard a NASA KC135 turbojet over the Gulf of Mexico from Houston’s Johnson Space Center and experienced the awe-inspiring sensation of creating art in a microgravity environment as scientific research.

My intention was simple: to eliminate the structural support—the canvas—while creating paintings floating in mid-air, with my body enveloped in the composition. I intended for technology and microgravity to contribute to the organic development of these kinetic “drift paintings,” with spontaneity and serendipity orchestrating the results

NOTE: The text presented in this section was written by Frank Pietronigro and published in the MIT Press publication Leonardo 33, No. 3, pp. 169–177, 2000.

Painting in Microgravity: Beginnings

I unzipped the creativity chamber and entered. (I had originally used the word “Tabernacle” to signify the “creativity chamber” and to site “its basis in ritual” [27].) Equipped with my motion-sickness bags, swim cap and goggles, I experiencing various forms of disorientation as everything floated around me. Sometime after parabola 20, I was able to attach canvas, while floating in the space, to the interior of the chamber. Plummeting to the floor with the return of gravity, I was ready begin my “study of fluid dynamics.”

The time had finally come for me to paint, so I took a pastry bag and began to squeeze (Fig. 15). My experiences with microgravity dynamics were without precedence in my experience as an artist. I felt great satisfaction with what was happening. The evolution of the forms was unexpectedly ethereal. The paint and I floated in what I remember as slow motion. Every action was elementary; I had little control over the outcome, yet I began to understand some things about this working space. Various pastry tips indeed produced different-sized biomorphic paint blobs whose velocity was dependent upon the movement of the jet and the pressure I exerted on the paint applicators. I planned to wear goggles to protect my eyes from getting paint in them; however, I did not expect the humidity from sweating, due to a lack of convection, to fill the chamber and render the goggles useless. Surprisingly, I discovered that the floating paint presented very little hazard. I was able to build up initial judgements about floating in harmony with the paint, on which I based future actions.

Paint did escape out of the creativity chamber’s air vent as my body pressed the paint through the lavender meshed opening. It is significant to me that NASA staff decided to allow the paint to remain on the ceiling of the jet. In a New York Times article highlighting the project, M.G. Lord stated: “NASA, however, left the marks alone. ‘There’s a wonderful little abstract blob on the ceiling,’ Mr. Fort said. ‘It’s considered art’” [28]. I fully believe, despite confronting some anticipated resistance from some camps within NASA, that NASA colleagues at the local level truly understood the scientific importance of our work as artists.

images
http://www.pietronigro.com/space/12.htm

2002 –  Stephen Little’s claim (did not occur)

Stephen Little, on June 14th, 2002 at 11:26 pm wrote:

I was very interested in reading your comments. As a contemporary UK artist myself, I am to have one of my works transported to the surface of the Moon by the end of this year onboard a US orbiter. If all goes to plan, as it should, I will be mankind’s first interplanetary arts ambassador only in as much as my work will be on the Moon by the end of 2002. Hirst’s flight will not depart until 2003 and will then take nine months. I certainly hold no gripes about Damien’s work and think of all his practice, the colour chart is without a doubt the most fitting for the Beagle project. If we are to get our work into space, we will only accomplish this by being proactive and attempting to make it happen as I and others have… it’s not as difficultas you might think!

Is the same guy who wrote: "Design and Determination" By Stephen E. Little, and "Isms: Understanding Art (Turtleback)" by Stephen Little

2002 – Lance Bass from boy band ‘Nsync to spend week in Soyuz (proposed – did not occur)

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tourism-02m.html

Following the orbital flights of rich "space tourists" in recent years, many more people have come forward with schemes to pay the Russian ticket price of $20,000,000 (or so) for a week-long mission aboard a Soyuz space capsule. The latest candidate is a young pop singer and teenage heart throb named Lance Bass, from the group 'Nsync.

Russian cosmonaut Sergey Zalyotin and Belgian astronaut Frank de Winne will blast off October 28 in a new Soyuz, dock to the International Space Station, and return to Earth a few days later in the Soyuz currently attached there. It serves as a lifeboat for the long-term station residents but has to be replaced every six months. Two men are needed to fly the Soyuz, but the third seat has always been available for special passengers.

The current drama has been quite a show. Each week another "final deadline" passes, yet the project to put the into space in two months still sputters along towards the launch pad. His sponsors, led by Hollywood producer David Krieff, continue to dodge the demands of the rocket owners in Russia for up-front cash payments.

After completion of 'N Sync's Pop Odyssey Tour, Bass moved to Star City, Russia in much publicized pursuit of a seat on a Soyuz space capsule.[3] Bass was certified by both NASA and the Russian Space Program after several months of cosmonaut training,[3] and planned to join the TMA-1 mission to the International Space Station in October of that year.[5] However, after his financial sponsors backed out, Bass was denied a seat on the mission.

In order to be admitted into training, Bass agreed to undergo heart surgery to correct cardiac arrhythmia, which was discovered in 1999 when he collapsed after a concert.[53] After several months of training, Bass received cosmonaut certification and was scheduled to fly into space on the Soyuz TMA-1 mission that was to be launched on October 30, 2002. The capsule was scheduled to fly to the International Space Station and land in a desert in Kazakhstan

2003 – Ed Lu is "The Piano Man" Aboard the ISS

Ed Lu plays piano on the International Space Station, July 14, 2003. Lu told students at Space Camp Turkey--home of YM3SCT--that one of the things he enjoys doing in his off-hours is playing the piano. "We have a small piano up here. It's an electronic piano, and I like to play the piano in my spare time,"

2003 – Music on the Space Station

Sept. 4, 2003: Astronaut Carl Walz once lived on the International Space Station (ISS) for 196 days--about six and a half months. That's a long time to look down at Earth, and not be able to touch it.

Before he went up in 2001, Walz recalls, the psychological support people asked him what kind of things he'd be interested in taking along. "I said, 'Well, a keyboard would be nice.' And they said, 'We'll look into that.'"

A lot of astronauts play instruments. There's even an astronaut rock-and-roll band. And a surprising variety of musical instruments have found their way into space: in addition to the keyboard, there's been a flute, a guitar, a saxophone, and an Australian aboriginal wind instrument known as a didgeridoo.

For Mike Pedley, the concern isn't music, it's safety. Pedley is the NASA space station manager for Materials and Processes, which means that if an astronaut wants to bring up a musical instrument, Pedley has to make sure it's safe to fly.

An electronic keyboard, for instance, might be a source of electromagnetic radiation capable of interfering with the operation of the shuttle or station. Such items can usually be modified, explains Pedley. The type of casing makes a difference: something in a metal case generally doesn't emit much radiation; in a plastic case, it emits more. Usually, he says, it's possible to change one or two components in a way that reduces the radiation without affecting the function.

Wooden instruments like guitars raise another concern: they're flammable. These things are allowed to go up only if astronauts agree to handle them with care and stow them while not in use.

When you play music on the shuttle or the station, it doesn't sound different, say the astronauts. The physics of sound is the same in microgravity as it is on Earth.

What changes is the way you handle the instruments.

"When I played the flute in space," says Ochoa, "I had my feet in foot loops." In microgravity, even the small force of the air blowing out of the flute would be enough to move her around the shuttle cabin. In fact, even with her feet hooked into the loops, she could feel that force pushing her back and forth, "just a little bit" as she played.

As for guitar, says Walz, "you don't need a guitar strap up there, but what was funny was, I'd be playing and then all of a sudden the pick would go out of my hands. Instead of falling, it would float away, and I'd have to catch it before it got lost."

Left: ISS science officer Ed Lu--another astronaut musician--performs for space station commander Yuri Malenchenko in the foreground. Click here to watch a video of Lu playing Peanuts during a interview with CBS Radio news on NASA TV.

And when he played the keyboard, Walz, too, had to use foot restraints to hold himself in place. In microgravity, he says, every time you hit a note, you push the keyboard away. "You have to sort of get used to that." Walz managed by strapping the keyboard to his legs with a bungee cord. "That constrained it a little bit more," but he never did figure out how to use the foot pedal without moving out of position.

Instruments are also checked for any gases they might produce. Unlike Earth where noxious fumes can waft harmlessly out the window, the space station is airtight. Even tiny amounts of gas could accumulate given time.

"We test some of them by putting a piece of the material into a closed chamber and heating it to as much as 120 degrees Fahrenheit for three days," explains Pedley. Then they take a sample of the gas and analyze it. (NASA testing procedures are so good that the US Navy is adopting them for submarines.)

"You always get a mixture of stuff coming off," he says. It's very common for things to give off high levels of alcohols, because they're often used as cleaning solvents. But, since the alcohols aren't very toxic, the levels don't normally matter. "Something like benzene, though, is relatively toxic, and it would take only a small amount to make the hardware unacceptable."

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/04sep_music.htm?list42293

2003 – “Spot Painting” by Damien Hirst (presumed destroyed)

Damien Hirst designs a spot painting to be used for the Beagle 2 lander intended to Land on Mars. It was exhibited at White Cube  in 2002 for two days before departing earth. The painting will be used as a calibration chart, so scientists can check whether any of the spacecraft's instruments were damaged during flight and landing. The Beagle 2 seperated from the Mars Express orbiter, and was to land on the surface on Christmas day, December 25, 2003. May 26, 2004, the search for the Beagle 2 is officially abandoned and it is considered destroyed on the martian surface.

Hirst art heads to Mars
The first piece of artwork to be designed for space
Friday, 29 November, 2002, 18:15 GMT

British artist Damien Hirst has unveiled artwork that will travel into space on the British Beagle 2 lander journeying to Mars. One of Hirst's famous spot paintings - rows of differently coloured spots - will be used as a special instrument calibration chart. It will be attached to the spacecraft after two days on show at the White Cube gallery in London. Beagle 2 will be launched from Kazakhstan in May next year and Hirst said he hoped to take his seven-year-old son along to see it. The Beagle 2 should touch down on Mars in December 2003. The lander is going to Mars to see whether there is - or was - life on the planet, as part of the European Space Agency's (Esa) Mars Express mission. The parent Esa probe will be put itself into orbit around the planet, before dropping Beagle 2 down to the surface. Parachutes and aircushions will help the lander make a soft touchdown.

Hirst's painting has been painted with pigments that will withstand the rigours of space flight.

It will be used as a reference chart so scientists back on Earth can check whether any of the lander's instruments have been damaged during transit or landing. The scientist behind Beagle 2 is planetary expert Professor Colin Pillinger, who had the idea to enlist Hirst in the project after seeing one of his spot paintings in a documentary three years ago. Professor Pillinger said: "This collaboration is not about displaying art in space but about finding out if there is life on Mars."

The painting will be joined by a track from British rock band Blur which will be beamed back from the probe. The track will act as a call sign to tell Professor Pillinger's team that Beagle has landed safely. The tune - written by band members Alex James and Dave Rowntree before the band began work on their new album - is based on a mathematical sequence.

The British artist Damien Hirst joined the Beagle 2 team to provide an image on the lander based on his famous spot paintings, which will serve as the colour calibration target for the on-board cameras. These will be equipped with a variety of filters of known wave length. By using various iron oxides and other known minerals it will also be possible to obtain signals to standardise the Mössbauer and X-ray spectrometers.

2003 – “Dedalus” by Marcel.li Antúnez Roca

The Spanish artist and performer Marcel.li Antúnez Roca created Dedalus, a series of microperformances realized in 2003 during two parabolic flights aboard the Tupolev plane, flown at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, Star City, Russia. This work was part of a larger project carried out by the London organization The Arts Catalyst, which aims to enable artists to work in microgravity conditions. Performing with an exoskeleton wireless interface and the robot Requiem, Roca's involuntary movements activated videos by means of potentiometers in the dresskeleton’s circuit. The videos explore themes that the artist considers evocative of an exobiological iconography, such as biochemistry/microbiology, higher transgenic organisms and bio robots.

2003 – “Moonworks” by Craig Kalpakjian (proposed)

Craig Kalpakjian proposed a series of Earthworks-style drawings that would be executed on the surface of the moon, like the Nazca Lines or 60's bad boys Michael Heizer's and Dennis Oppenheim's desert drawings. He called them Moonworks.

2004 – “The End of the Moon” by Laurie Anderson - NASA artist in residence (on Earth only)

Laurie Anderson has become the first (and last) artist-in-residence of NASA. She will be developing space inspired work after having spent considerable time at NASA centers.

Has great links to Laurie Anderson’s project, as well as the Nasa Art Program
http://hobbyspace.com/Music/index.html#NASAMusic

2005 – “Light/Shadow” by Dan Goods - NASA artist in residence at JPL (on Earth only)

Dan Goods, artist in residence at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will display his Light/Shadow Exhibition in the One Colorado Courtyard in Pasadena during the biannual ArtNight on Friday, March 4, from 6 to 10 p.m.

2005 – "The Big Playground" by Daniel Goods

Daniel Goods, an artist employed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, came up with an earthbound work called "The Big Playground" to convey the scale of the cosmos and mankind's exploration of it. For part of this work, Goods had a JPL machinist drill a hole into a single grain of sand, which viewers can see through a magnifying glass. The grain represents the Milky Way, and the hole represents the portion of the galaxy in which astronomers have found 120 planets or so. To represent the universe's 100 billion galaxies, Goods notes, would take a half-dozen rooms full of sand.

2005 – "Space Synapse System” by Anna Hill (proposed)

Dublin artist Anna Hill, is called "Space Synapse System." The hub of the proposed project's space-based element will be the Symbiotic Sphere, a grapefruit-sized metallic orb adorned with gems and precious metals that will free float in the ISS. Cameras, microphones, and other sensors on the orb will record activity and gather information from ISS occupants (their heart rates, for example), satellites (images from planets and moons), and other information-generating agents. The Symbiotic Sphere will process the information streams into sets of instructions that it will beam to end-points on earth. These could include interactive stations in museums or a light system on Liberty Island that would "paint" the Statue of Liberty with an ever-changing pastiche of colors, reflecting the data that the orb is crunching at any particular moment.

2006 – Taking Control: International symposium on the science & culture of human spaceflight

9 & 10 Sept 2006, 10am–6pm
ROUNDHOUSE, London, UK / £60 (£50 concessions)
http://www1.roundhouse.org.uk/whatson

Was the Apollo programme, its origins in Cold War posturing, ultimately the most successful art project in history? What do we really gain from human space exploration, culturally and scientifically? How do we design long-term space missions, such as the mooted trip to Mars, so that astronauts are able to have a humanising experience? In an unstable world, who should be the decision makers in the quest for space?

Scientists, artists, psychologists and space architects meet in this 2-day international symposium to explore the future of space exploration from the human perspective. Sessions include, Habitat Design, Build Your Own Space Programme, the Human Body and Mind in Space, and Adapting to Alien Environments.

“Sometimes an inch or a foot is nothing at all, other times it is discomfort or death, it might be here on earth or in outer space … it might simply be in your head.” - Garrett Finney, space architect

Speakers:

Andrew Smith (UK), author of Moondust. discusses how he set out to interview all the remaining nine astronauts who walked on the moon; finding out how they were forever caught between the gravitational pull of the moon and the earth’s collective dreaming.

Marko Peljhan (Slovenia), artist, presents the conceptual and technological challenges that are arising in the process of the construction of the first artists’ remote sensing and communications micro-satellite (launch date – third quarter of 2008).

Garrett Finney (USA), former senior architect at Habitability Design Center at Johnson Space Center, discusses fun, design, technology, anthropometrics, human factors, fun, performance, objects in motion, transformation, fun, ecology, systems, ergonomics, efficiency, fun, and the future of humans in space.

Prof Gro Mjeldheim Sandal (Norway) is one of the world’s leading behavioural scientists studying psychological factors in space. She is currently leading one of the first psychological studies of crews on the International Space Station. Her recent research has focused on the implications of individual and cultural differences.

Tim Otto Roth (Germany), artist, introduces his proposed light flash experiment for the International Space Station, an artistic project which highlights the phenomena of light flashes seen by astronauts in space.

Dr Kevin Fong (UK), an authority on space medicine, explores the reasons for a mission to Mars, arguing that sending humans to examine the red planet for signs of life will help to answer the question: Are we alone in the universe and what is the likelihood of making ‘contact’?

Semiconductor (Joseph Gerhardt and Ruth Jarman) (UK), will discuss and present works from their fellowship at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory.

Sarah Jane Pell (tbc) (Australia), artist, discusses SubCulture, her underwater habitat vision, in the context of a future lunar habitat mission she has been developing with the International Space University & the NASA Ames Research Centre.

Ronald Jones (USA/Sweden), Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Konstfack University, Stockholm, addresses the threat of potentially fatal contamination of the Earth by extraterrestrial microbes brought back from space.

With Space Soon artists:
Aleksandra Mir (Sweden), Neal White (UK), Ion Sorvin (Denmark), London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson) (UK) and Michelle Griffiths (UK).

2008 – “House on the Moon” by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg (proposed)

http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~ra826/group5/mg/mgindex.html
http://www.mikaelgenberg.com/

2008 – “Yelling at stars” by Willoh S. Weiland (on Earth only)

Melbourne artist Willoh S. Weiland is producing a fantastic live audio event which will then be recorded and broadcast light years into outer space by Deep Space Communications Network in Florida, USA .

Yelling at stars is performed at Sidney Myer Music bowl, Saturday May 31st.

People can participate by logging on to the website to contribute suggestions for what we should yell in to space.

http://www.yellingatstars.com/

2008-2030 – “Painting on the Moon” by Michael Markowsky (proposed)

On March 19, 2008, Canadian artist Michael Markowsky announced his plan to travel to the moon and make a painting while standing on the lunar surface.