Week 9 Post

The Powers of Ten lecture video immediately made me think of nanotechnology, giving perspective to how small the nanotech scale is compared to not only ourselves, but all of space. In all honesty, I didn't find the lecture videos to be very interesting at all, nor the resources listed, but I found an article by Vice called "Where Art And Space Travel Meet: Why Is The Art World Suddenly So Captivated By The Cosmos?" that actually unified art and space. The article explains that art is like space travel because both seek to push the existing boundaries, and that the concept of being "avant-garde" is just a little bit out of reach like the wonders of space.

The article mentioned the work of Trevor Paglen, who created a sculpture called the Trinity Cube. The cube, a mere 20cm on each side, is created using irradiated glass from the Fukushima Exclusion Zone (2011) and Trinitite, a mineral created when the U.S. exploded the world's first atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945, turning sand into greenish glass. The Trinity Cube is a combination of the two glasses; two histories, two countries, melded into one.

The Trinity Cube, Trevor Paglen

Even in music, Kim Boekbinder released a song in 2012 called "The Sky is Calling," and the lyrics revolve around the infinite power of space. She even mentions the fractal nature of our world. The somg is set to images from NASA pictures, diagrams, and iconography.

Art and space combine beautifully for two reasons: first, space's infiniteness leads to endless possibilities, and second, you can't go wrong. No one can disprove possibilities when it comes to talking about the universe. There is no right and wrong, acceptable or controversial.

Source: http://www.gonorthfork.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/stars-shooting-stars-universe-1050x473.jpg

Sources
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/where-art-and-space-travel-meet-why-is-the-art-world-suddenly-so-captivated-by-the-cosmos
http://www.paglen.com/index.php?l=work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCJzUiBZItk
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/podcasts/ATC/peljhan
http://www.gonorthfork.org/the-weekends-best/earth-day-astronomy-day-hooray-plus-authors-concerts-art-more/