Week 9

Space and Art

The curiosity motivated people to explore the universe. With development of science and technology, human are able to understand what the outer space looks like or even step into that area and get a feeling of the wideness. Meanwhile artists also have been fascinated by the outer space and always want to show their perception of the universe. This results in the formation of space art, a genre of modern artistic expression.

The space art had, and still has, a significant function in informing the public regarding the yet inaccessible new frontiers in our Solar System. Some of the space artists work closely with space scientists and engineers to help them to visualize and develop their scientific and technological concepts of making the dream of space exploration a reality. Other space artists tend to expand their imagination and create interesting art works to fascinate the general publics.

URL<http://www.ludekpesek.ch/noel_cramer_dreams.php>.

The figures above are works from Lude Pesek, a space artist who specializes in paintings with theme related to space planets. The paintings bases on a real photo of the moon. It indicates the artist’s desire of transforming the moon surface to a beautiful environment, although it is still beyond people’s ability. 

URL< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXRNEyrkosM >.

Some of the space art works are not created in the traditional way. The video above shows an amazing spray painting method in presenting a champagne supernova.

Reference

1.       Barrow, John D. "The artful universe." (1995).

2.       Rosenfeld, R. A. "Astronomical Art & Artifact: Reverse Engineering an Astronomical Image." Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 108 (2014): 76.

3.       Rosenfeld, R. A. "Astronomical Art & Artifact: A Transit of Venus Dream Unfulfilled: Mungo Turnbull and Sir John A. Macdonald." Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 106 (2012): 27.

4.       Vesna, Victoria. Lecture. DESMA 9. Web.  May. 2015.

5.       Press, William H. Numerical recipes 3rd edition: The art of scientific computing. Cambridge university press, 2007.