Space presented as art: Asteria Creatives Division
By Gonzalo Gil || Asteria Creatives Division
Science and art, two phrasings of the same question
Two people come across an elephant laying down in the forest. Having never seen something like it before, they stroke their chin, and hum a curious “hmmm”. One of them, in their attempt to understand it, strokes the elephant’s back, lifts its ear to see how it responds, records how much its tail moves when they touch the elephant’s right leg compared to when they touch their left leg, and annotates what they find. They curiously walk around the elephant to pat their trunk, until finding a beautiful, geometric pattern of grooves and lines engraved into its skin. They speculate on how the pattern would change over the elephant’s life, or with changing temperatures, and proceed to annotate the number of lines and their changing length, then quantify how the angles in the patterns vary along the length of the trunk. The other person walks towards it and becomes enthralled with the trunk’s pattern. They speculate on what the geometric pattern would look like if it covered the entire elephant, in a form of biological tapestry. Having only painting tools at hand, they grab a brush and paint their view of this idea. After some time of observing it in awe, they return to their village and narrate their encounter with the elephant, presenting their different views of the same thing.
This analogy, as simplistic as it may seem, holds a powerful point about art and science as two interpretations of the same thing, two different forms of speculation and inquiry, two branches of the same philosophy.
It is worth asking, though, why is it that they’ve become so distant, science being perceived as constrained to white walled laboratories following purely systematic and sometimes unimaginative methods, and art as more speculative, creative, and engageable with the public? There are understandable reasons for why some science has become systematic and repetitive, and why it aims to be impartial (think of the science required to make reliable medicine, or to ensure satellites don’t fly off into deep Space unintentionally, etc.) and why contemporary art has drifted from those principles. However, their inquiry of “why does nature and the world around us do that?” and speculation on “what would happen if…?” is beautifully similar.
In our current culture, though, art tends to have an easier access point to people due to its ability to convey complex ideas in a form that’s closer to our sensory experience.
Space presented as art?
We can continue the discussion of why science and art have been separated, or for now take it as a fact that the public has an easier time engaging with complex concepts through art than through science. Using this fact gives rise to a simple, useful formula: find something that people see as overly elaborate and complex and make art from it to reintroduce it, now phrased differently. If we take the example of Space, it’s commonly seen as abstract and detached from our day to day reality. With this unfortunately being the case, it can be easy to overlook the questions of how the development of Space has benefited Earth, how Space Exploration will shape humanity, how have different cultures interpreted Space, etc., but these questions have the power to engage and influence audiences much broader than just scientists. The topic of Space, although commonly seen as pure science, has quietly begun to stretch its influence into fields of sociology, politics, ethics, art, and so on.
Asteria’s Creative Division — art orbiting around ideas of Space
This is where Asteria’s Creative Division comes in. Asteria’s Creative Division is a small group of artists, musicians, and scientists making art related to Space, in as interdisciplinary a form as possible. Our aim is to provide meaningful motivation for people to enter the field of Space in research, engineering, and art through thought-provoking work, as well as invite people to contemplate on the beauty of Space and its potential to aid societal development on Earth. Over the course of the next year we’ll be holding three “events” or exhibits, where the group will be making largely interdisciplinary artworks on the interface of science, art, and other disciplines.
Our idea is to have three propositions, three “philosophical points” about Space that we’ll present to the public in one event each:
- Space Development = Earth Development.
- Technologies, policies, etc. developed for Space have enormous influences on development of Earth systems, ranging from environmental, to humanitarian, to technological, and so on.
2. Space exploration is about curiosity, not about leaving a broken Earth behind.
- The notion that humanity leaves the Earth because we’ve ruined it and have to find somewhere else to go is, we think, deeply flawed and almost taken as fact in current culture. Earth is the best home we’ll ever have, and the exploration of Space is not about finding a substitute, but about curiosity.
3. Humanity has found meaning from Space for countless years in countless cultures.
- We’re currently biased by our current culture in the ideas of exploring Space, but if we are to engage in Space exploration, how do we integrate ideas from countless cultures over human history that have had beautiful and insightful interpretations of humanity reaching out beyond Earth?
Our group is currently composed of visual artists, an art historian, physicists, a sculptor, a geoscientist, an animator, and sound designers, and we’ll be expanding our reach to researchers and other artists to make works in the interface of science, art, and other disciplines. The purpose of our interdisciplinary approach is to show these different interpretations of the same thing, different views of the elephant.
To find out more about our exhibits, works, or general progress, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn!
