Space + Exploration + Art | Week 5

Space was described as "the final frontier" in the beginning of lecture, conjuring images of courageous astronauts exploring foreign planets throughout the galaxy.  While that description is fitting, I disagree with the finality that it suggests.  Space is not humankind's final frontier.  As we learn more and more about each of the topics in this class, what we once thought was a full understanding has now led to a huge pandora's box of further questions, of new frontiers.  For example, the field of genetics has now led into the entirely new "frontier" of epigenetics.  Understanding nerves and brain anatomy has now led to huge questions in the debate about nature vs. nurture and the development of personality and consciousness.  For me, space is our most expansive, mysterious frontier, but just one of infinite frontiers that humans continue to explore.

Astronauts of Apollo 11

In watching Professor Vesna's brief overview of space exploration and the motivations behind the movement, there seem to be parallels between art and science. The field of space exploration delves into the unknown, much as artists' often aim to elucidate a foreign concept.  Similarly, space exploration involved taking risks. From the casualties resulting from faulty rockets in Apollo 1/13, Challenger, and Columbia, space exploration has always been a dangerous expedition into the unknown. This theme reminded me of art, as artists push boundaries and take risks (sometimes risking their own bodies!), in order to seek greater understanding of the unknown.

Many times, it can seem as if art is reactionary to scientific advancement.  Taking examples from previous lectures, bio-art formed as a response to the new ability to manipulate DNA and genomes.  Artists were able to manipulate butterfly wing patterns because science made that possible; it's not as if scientists spent billions on the Human Genome Project for the sole prospect of creating butterfly wing art (though it was a beautiful artistic representation of technological advancement).

However, contrary to other fields, the scope of space allows artists be the drivers and dreamers behind exploration and the direction of science.  From nanometers and microscopic scale to the 10^25 massive scale of the universe, the scope and size of space is almost incomprehensible. Because the idea of space, to this day, is still such a huge mystery, artists are given free reign to imagine and dream up plans of what civilization might look like on the moon, or what extraterrestrial life may resemble.  In a contrast to other fields where knowledge is expansive but not yet all-encompassing, space is essentially an artist's largest canvas.  Beyond that, this canvas is nearly entirely blank -- we are just beginning to scratch the surface in understanding the galaxy from Earth's POV, much less the larger universe from the perspective of other intelligent beings or galaxies.

It is the nearly-incomprehensible massive scale of that drives artists, and all human life, to dream of what lies out in the universe's unexplored corners (if there are even any corners that exist!), and what motivates artists such as Joe Davis to capture the human essence and send it out into space, whether it be through paintings, experiments or manipulated E-Coli sequences. Artists are given free reign to be as creative as humanly possible. Space is a realm where no dream is too fantastic, where no conventional rules of physics, scale, or time really exist.  Because of this, artists have used their creative force to physically depict our wildest dreams in the form of art, science fiction, and fantasy films.  Their art thus drives the direction of space exploration from a scientists' point-of-view, as the goal of both art and science and the third culture is to seek greater understanding of the human experience.  ...or at least that's what I think!

Sources:
"A Brief History of NASA." A Brief History of NASA. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 July 2014. <http://history.nasa.gov/factsheet.htm>.
"Apollo 13: Facts About NASA's Near-Disaster." Space.com. Space.com, n.d. Web. 28 July 2014. <http://www.space.com/17250-apollo-13-facts.html>.
"The Scale of the Universe." Newgrounds.com. Newgrounds.com, n.d. Web. 28 July 2014. <http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347>.
Franklin, H. Bruce. "Science Fiction: The Early History." Science Fiction: The Early History. Rutgers, n.d. Web. 28 July 2014. <http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/sfhist.html>.
Vesna, Victoria. "Space + Exploration + Art, Part 4." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 28 July 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qSc72u9KhI&list=PL9DBF43664EAC8BC7>