Images: Part Three

Dafne found these images to consider:

Images Part Two

Unknown Artist

CA early 1960s

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/05/01/martian2bcity2.jpg

There's a lot to love about the heroic naivete of SciFi Pulp. WWII was over, humans had harnessed the power of the atom, Americans were full of smug assurance that we were the "Good Guys" and the universe would open to us, complete with all the comforts of home plus new delights to be discovered. Sure, there might be rough patches here and there, but only enough to make things interesting, opportunities to prove virility.

Here we have ideal suburban living, complete with a garage, covered entry, satellite TV and hot servile female.

Moon Base

1970's BBC series, UFO

A classic from the era of Space 1999 and Buck Rogers. The Apollo mission was still fresh in peoples' minds, and they had images with eerie lighting and space-grit-covered once-white ships, battered from the intense heat of re-entry to take the gloss off of the technocolor dreams of 1950s pulp. This modular set design feels more real to me than the CGI perfection of popular images such as the Halo game series.

Cover Art, Season 3 Lost in Space DVD

Space Travel in the throes of the Sexual Revolution, or Women Can Wear Short Skirts While They Make The Goddamn Coffee. See also: Star Trek, the original series.

Suburbs 2100

Dawid Michalczyk

http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/sci-fi/sci-fi_city-199805.html

This is interesting, and kind of quaint in the same way that Lost In Space is quaint. Sure, it's futuristic and all, but if we can make flying cars, why would we clutter our skylines with wires and flying petrol stations? I think it conveys the dystopian bleakness of what we expect to come from commercial enterprise. As in, extraterrestrial colonization is most likely to happen when there's financial incentive to make it happen. Like European expansion into the Americas, resources and commerce was the driving force. People pioneered in order to grab land and opportunities before others did.

The downside of this type of pioneering is, the work and railroad towns that sprung up as a result of enterprise weren't artful or lovely. They were functional and dangerous. Everyone was there to make a buck. I think this image conveys that fear pretty well.

Images Part One

Assignment 1A was to find some images of space colonization. Let's begin.

Moon Colony
I found this image here: http://powerforce.moo.jp/page184.html

Unfortunately, my Japanese isn't good enough to make out more than some of the titles in Katakana (my kanji is lacking). I wish I could tell you the artist's name. I like the distortion created by the dome. A very recent, cold rendition.





As David Bowie sang about sailors fighting on the dance floor, he asked, is there life on Mars?

Mars Colony

Source: http://www.marssociety.org/

Ah. Space colonization as the equivalent to trailers scattered across the Mojave Desert! I CAN FEEL THE SIREN SONG! BOOK NOW FOR YOUR RED DIRT FARM VACATION! YOU, TOO, CAN LIVE IN AN INFLATED CLEAR PLASTIC NURSING SOW!

I would attribute this image to the late 1980s by the cut of the space suit. It's a very practical view: survival reliant upon self-sufficient pods. My question is, why would people travel all that way just to survive?

Cover, NSS 2008 Space Settlement Calendar (sold out)

http://www.nss.org/settlement/calendar/buy.htm

Although the focus of this work is on a "halo"-style environment, I really liked the human touches which I feel a colony will need to survive. People like changes of scenery, we like things to be scaled appropriately for our viewing pace. A colony of 10,000 people won't have Chicago or LA-scaled buildings and avenues. Transportation will be a defining aspect. Will a small colony rely upon solar scooters of some sort? Can a small colony afford the expenditure of materials and resources for individual transportation, or rely on efficient mass transit?

These questions will, ultimately, define livable spaces. If everything is too overscaled and institutional, people won't feel comfortable there.

And So It Begins

Greetings. This blog was created to track progress on a topic studio with Michael Fox of FoxLin Studios (http://www.foxlin.com/press.html). We are going to the moon!

It will be a fantastic adventure, I assure you.