Space Art

This list tries to put together artists in the context of a contemporary art practice who relate to space in their work. This contrasts to what the term space art refers in the wikipedia. If you perform a search on Google:Space Art you'll see that he term space art is generally associated with science fiction style illustrations of outer space. The article wikipedia:Space Art is heavily edited by members of the International Association of Astronomical Artists which feature cheesy pictures of astronauts, space craft and colorful planetary scenery. Since the Hubble Space Telescope delivers even more spectacular images then previsioned by air-brush illustrators the demand for “artistic” renderings of the outer space has arguably declined, the IAAA's website looks like it's from the 90ies.

Artists

• Liza Béar *19__ Media Art Net NY based English cinematographer, video artist & writer; co-founded Avalanche magazine in the ‘70s, and later produced the TV show, Communications Update.
  • Send Receive I & Send Receive II (1977) documentaries of the live performance connecting two dancers via satellite,
    in collaboration with Keith Sonnier Liza's Blog claims that it is "the first interactive satellite transmission organized by artists"
  • Satellite TV: Birth of an Industry (1980)
• Oliver van den Berg *1967 is fascinated by space, media and military technology. He builds rockets, cameras and planetarium projectors in laser-cut plywood and metal, keeping a fretwork (jigsaw) appeal to it.
  • Raketennamen (2004) Rocket Names
  • Sternenprojektor (2005) Star Projecter
  • Star Projector II (2009) Star Projecter II
• Ursula Biemann *1955
  • Remote Sensing (2001) video essay, 53 MIN mapping the global sex trade (YouTube)
• Jens Brand *1968 built a device, called the G-Player with which he claims to read the earth's surface like a record, a satellites trajectory being the needle defining the position. Outcome is mostly noise.
  • Gpod — GP4 (2006)
• Pierre Comte *1927
  • Horus (1979)
  • Signature terre (1989)
• Douglas Davis *1933, interview on telepolis, Gallery
  • Seven Thoughts (1976)
  • The Last Nine Minutes, Live performance for international satellite telecast (1977)
• Joe Davis *1953
  • Microvenus (1986) a genetically modified bacteria carrying the stylized image of a vulva. That image was supposed to be included in the Golden Record sent to outer space in the voyager craft but then was censored.
• Alejo Duque/Andrés Burbano/Camilo Martínez/Gabriel Zea
  • BereBere (2007)
• Olafur Eliasson *1967
  • Your space embracer (2004)
• Peter Fend *1950
  • Ocean Earth Construction and Development Corporation (1980)
• Sylvie Fleury *1961
  • First Spaceship on Venus
  • Vitteaux (2007) – A crashed UFO
• Bill Fontana *1947
  • Satellite Soundbridge Köln-San Francisco mp3 (1987)
• Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz
  • Electronic Café (1984)
• Richard Grayson *1958
  • Intelligence (2004 - ongoing) drawings of horoscopes
• Joanna Griffin
• Max Grüter *1955
• Ingo Günther *1957
  • K4(C3I) (1987) Satellite images projected on a block of marble
• Yolande Harris *1975
  • Sun Run Sun: sonic navigations (2008)
• Martin Heckmann *1966
  • Satland (2006)
• Nelson Henricks
  • Satellite (2004)
• Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle *1961
  • Phantom Truck (2007) - A mock up of the alledged chemical weapons factories on trucks presented by Colin Powell to the UN security council
• Eva and Franco Mattes a.k.a. 0100101110101101.ORG
  • VOPOS A Self-surveillance System for Complete Digital Transparency
• Jimmy McBride
• Agnes Meyer-Brandis *1973 is mimicking scientific research: she interacts with the public when creating a meteor crater in space or practising movement in space-suits.
  • Impact], public Meteorit-Watching (2009)
  • Space Travelling for Beginners - a public moon walk workshop (2009)
• Myriel Milicevic *1974
  • Neighbourhood Satellites (local sensing, not remote sensing)
• Aleksandra Mir *1967
  • First woman on the moon (2001) a moon like surface at a beach to enact a moon landing with a female crew and specially designed wear.
  • Gravity (2006), a huge rocket build fom stuff found at a junk yard
• Trevor Paglen *1974
  • Terminal Air
  • Active Military and Reconnaissance Satellites of the United States of America
• Nam-June Paik *1932 †2006 pioneering in using satellites to broadcast
  • Global Grove a transatlantic TV-show featuring John Cage, Josef Beuys, Merce Cunningham and others.
• Olaf Nicolai *1962
  • The Tears of St. Lawrence: An Appointment to Watch Falling Stars (2005) an invitation to watch a star shower – presenting the firmament like an art-event.
• Marko Peljhan *1969
  • Makrolab
  • Arctic Perspective
• Sun Ra *1914 †1993 jazz musician, poet, philosopher. Comes from Saturn
  • Space is the Place A surreal tale of good and evil, while Ra comes saving the world from planet Saturn in a space craft propelled by music.
• Thomas Ruff*1958
  • Sternschnuppen
• Tom Sachs *1966 is rebuilding American icons from plywood. The Apollo moon landing spacecraft is one such icon. Watch the video of the moon landing re-enactment quoting the original TV-footage of this historic event.
• Tom Van Sant *1931
  • Reflections from Earth (1980)
• Björn Schülke builds satellite shaped sculptures
  • Space Observer (2010)
  • Planet Space Rover (2004)
  • Solar Kinetic Object #15 (2006)
  • Observer #2 (2003)
• Willoughby Sharp* 1936 †2008
  • Send/Receive Satellite Network II,
• Roman Signer *1938 - A swiss artist who mixes performance with documentation, sculpture with video; one of his works, Moonflight involves visuals of the moon. (I am not sure if he is really a "Satellite Artist". I know I am the "ETERNAL SCEPTIC" please someone delete my comments, they will unfortunately not self-destruct after you have read them, but I think we should look closer at our entries!-) BLR)
  • Moonflight (2002) An installation in which a camera in a mini-helicopter flies over a map of the moon and projects the images on the wall.
• Keith Sonnier *1941 American minimalist sculptur, working primarily with reflective metals, glass,performance, video and light; one of the first artists to use light in sculpture in the 1960s.
  • Send/Receive Satellite Network New York City - San Francisco Bay (1977)
• Brian Springer *1959 Media Art Net recorded then unencrypted raw footage of transmissions from reporters to the TV-stations to be cut and edited. The revealing scenes in the election campaign show how the politicians try to use the media to bring their message across without answering the question.
  • Feed (1992)
  • Spin (1995)
• Arthur Woods *1948
  • O.U.R.S. Project Orbiting Unification Ring Satellite Project (1985 - 1990)
  • Cosmic Dancer

Groups, institutions, collectives

• BLIX (Robert Adrian X, Helmut Mark, Zelko Wiener, and others)
• Bogota Declaration (2009)
• International Sputnik Day 2007
• Cosmokinetic Cabinet Noordung/Dunja Zupancic & Dragan Zivadinov
• Post Gravity Art
• RIXC, Riga
  • Acoustic Space Lab (2001)
• ZKM Karlsruhe
  • Space Place (since 2006) Art in the Age of Orbitization - Gotchi Universe: A ZKM project intending “to develop a ZKM-satellite dedicated to the storage of and access to orbiting art.”
• Movimento dos Sem-Satélites, the “satelliteless people movement”, inspired by the Brazilian landless workers' movement. Mostly engaged into the critique of big media monopoly and grassroots floss activism.

See also

• GPS for locative media artworks.