Some Proposals for Art Objects in Extraterrestrial Space

Leouardo, Vol. 8, pp. 139-141. Pergamon Press 1975. Printed in Great Britain SOME PROPOSALS FOR ART OBJECTS IN EXTRATERRESTRIAL SPACE Albert Notarbartolo* 1. Introduction Slender as lightning The Earth and lovely became as praying hands it faced the light of no man’s moon. It stood calm as a tall reed before the coming of wind. 5,4, 3, 2, I, Zero! I wrote this poem in 1954 after contemplating the mysteries of outer space on a clear night. Now it is 1974 and mankind has accomplished what was once thought to be impossible-making voyages of exploration beyond the confines of the Earth. Today, when I gaze at the immensity of the cosmos, I am filled with an unrestrained exhilaration that is both pride and humility. My sense of cosmic loneliness is ended, because I am convinced that mankind can endure as well as art, man’s quest for self-expression, even if the Earth should become uninhabitable. Several artists have described in Leonard0 their works in response to their reactions to the opening of the space age [llr]. In 1971 I began to think about art objects that I call spaceworks, which would either orbit the Earth or be placed into an orbit such that they would remain stationary above a given point on the Earth. They would serve as beacons of man’s presence in the solar system and, hopefully, would give emotional satisfaction to those on Earth and to those who will spend many days on space missions in the future. They might help to reduce the psychological stresses imposed upon researchers by prolonged exposure to the threatening environment of outer space. If a government should agree to finance spaceworks in orbit about the Earth, some people who would find them emotionally unsatisfying, would object that they contribute merely to the polution of outer space and some would be convinced that their cost cannot be defended in view of the The Rocket a small blue eye. And the rocket lifted man away into the dark meadows of the green-tailed comet. * Artist living at 215 West 98th St., New York, NY 10025, U.S.A. (Received 4 March 1974.) wretched condition of the majority of people on the Earth. My dream is that support for the first launching of a spacework can be obtained as a cooperative international venture under the auspices of the United Nations to symbolize the solidarity of mankind. The spacework could be justified partly by using it as a space station for scientific research or the exterior of a space station could be designed so as to function as an art object. In order for some of the details of one of the spaceworks in orbit to be seen by the unaided eye, I estimate that it should be more than 1,000 ft. in diameter and it should be located about 1,800miles from the Earth. A spherical satellite of about 60 in. diameter, having a highly reflecting surface and located hundreds of miles from the Earth, would appear as a dot of light with the brilliance of a second magnitude star. A good example of a man-made space object is the passive communications satellite ‘Echo I’ of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration , U.S.A.), which was an aluminized Mylar inflated sphere, 100ft. in diameter and was launched into orbit on 12 August 1960. The nearest point (perigee) and the farthest point (apogee) of its elliptical orbit were 945 miles and 1049 miles, respectively. It circled the Earth in about two hours and had an orbital life of about one year. During the Summer of 1971 I began to feel tyrannized by the limitations of two dimensions for depicting images in drawings and paintings. I developed a kind of aesthetic claustrophobia that I could not explain. I, therefore, stopped drawing and painting for a while and began to make threedimensional paper structures. But soon I foundthat I was reacting to these as I had to images depicted in two dimensions. In whatever man-made environment that I placed the structures, they were affectedby neighbouring objects andevenin anempty room I felt that they were confined by the walls...