Week 9: Space+Art
Being a former physics major, space really has a special place in my heart. I grew up building models of Apollo 11, looking at Hubble images and watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos. Heck, I even wanted to be an astronaut when I was little.
And the appeal of the "last frontier" is understandable. For anyone who hasn't studied physics, the scale of outer space is just unfathomable. Americans often complain about the long flights between Los Angeles and New York. It takes almost nine months to fly to Mars. The speed at which the spacecraft flies is fast enough to noticeably experience time dilation. Crazy stuff, right?
So I get it. It's a lot of hard-to-imagine stuff, and harder something it is to imagine the more imagination it sparks. That's why we have Star Wars, Star Trek and all that Star-(insert word here) sci-fi flicks in our cultural canon now. And I find them okay because they verge so far from what's scientifically possible that it's absolutely clear it's a work of fiction. Sorry Captain, Scotty can't beam you up in reality.
And I guess that's why I'm absolutely fascinated by how Stanley Kubrick approached space in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The portrayal of zero gravity, the lack of sound in a vacuum and the centrifugal simulation of gravity (and velcro where there is none), to name a few, really brought to the masses a more scientifically sound portrayal of space. This is in the 60's, mind you. This tradition of accuracy saw a modern audience in recent films such as Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014) and The Martian (2015). It's more exciting knowing that something is actually plausible.
Another important influence of 2001 is Kubrick's metaphor of objects in space to ballerinas dancing to The Blue Danube. Now flight in general, both space and earthly, is often associated with calm, classical music. We also have an entire subgenre called space music in which the simple structures of the composition interplays with its echoey sonic structures in a slow, calm beat.
So enjoy this sample of space music by the ambient artist Brian Eno.
1. Sagan, Carl. The Pale Blue Dot: Short Recording. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/cosmos000110/.
2. Wolfram|Alpha (2019). retrieved June 2, 2019, from http://www.wolframalpha.com/ with query [Hohmann transfer time Mars].
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, MGM, 1968.
And the appeal of the "last frontier" is understandable. For anyone who hasn't studied physics, the scale of outer space is just unfathomable. Americans often complain about the long flights between Los Angeles and New York. It takes almost nine months to fly to Mars. The speed at which the spacecraft flies is fast enough to noticeably experience time dilation. Crazy stuff, right?
So I get it. It's a lot of hard-to-imagine stuff, and harder something it is to imagine the more imagination it sparks. That's why we have Star Wars, Star Trek and all that Star-(insert word here) sci-fi flicks in our cultural canon now. And I find them okay because they verge so far from what's scientifically possible that it's absolutely clear it's a work of fiction. Sorry Captain, Scotty can't beam you up in reality.
And I guess that's why I'm absolutely fascinated by how Stanley Kubrick approached space in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The portrayal of zero gravity, the lack of sound in a vacuum and the centrifugal simulation of gravity (and velcro where there is none), to name a few, really brought to the masses a more scientifically sound portrayal of space. This is in the 60's, mind you. This tradition of accuracy saw a modern audience in recent films such as Gravity (2013), Interstellar (2014) and The Martian (2015). It's more exciting knowing that something is actually plausible.
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| A still from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Space Station V spins such that the centrifugal force experienced at the outer edges is equal to gravity on Earth's surface, creating "artificial gravity." |
Another important influence of 2001 is Kubrick's metaphor of objects in space to ballerinas dancing to The Blue Danube. Now flight in general, both space and earthly, is often associated with calm, classical music. We also have an entire subgenre called space music in which the simple structures of the composition interplays with its echoey sonic structures in a slow, calm beat.
So enjoy this sample of space music by the ambient artist Brian Eno.
1. Sagan, Carl. The Pale Blue Dot: Short Recording. Audio. https://www.loc.gov/item/cosmos000110/.
2. Wolfram|Alpha (2019). retrieved June 2, 2019, from http://www.wolframalpha.com/ with query [Hohmann transfer time Mars].
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, MGM, 1968.
4. Allain, Rhett. "Artificial Gravity in the Spinning Discovery One." Wired, 21 June 2013. https://www.wired.com/2013/06/artificial-gravity-in-the-spinning-discovery-one/
5. Eno, Brian. "An Ending (Ascent)." Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. E.G. Records, 1983. CD.
5. Eno, Brian. "An Ending (Ascent)." Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. E.G. Records, 1983. CD.
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