moon museum

via @shane mecklenburger, who posted this beautiful link to facebook today,
text mirrored from wikipedia:


The Moon Museum is a small ceramic wafer three-quarters of an inch by half an inch in size,^[1] containing artworks by six prominent artists from the late 1960s. The artists with works in the "museum" are Robert Rauschenberg, David Novros, John Chamberlain, Claes Oldenburg, Forrest Myers, and Andy Warhol.^[1]
This wafer was supposedly covertly attached to a leg of the Intrepid landing module, and subsequently left on the moon during Apollo 12.^[2] The moon museum is considered the first Space Art object.^[3] While it is impossible to tell if the Moon Museum is actually on the moon without sending another mission to look, many other personal effects were smuggled onto the Apollo 12 lander and hidden in the layers of gold blankets that wrapped parts of the spacecraft.^[1]

Artist John Chamberlain, Forrest Myers, David Novros, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol Year 1969 (1969) Type ceramic wafer Dimensions 1.9 cm × 1.3 cm (0.75 in × 0.5 in) Location Apollo 12 Intrepid landing module, Mare Cognitum   Contents [hide] 1 History 2 Artworks 3 References 4 See also 5 External links

History

Image of the Moon Museum from the original New York Times article

The concept for the Moon Museum was brainstormed by Forrest "Frosty" Myers. He stated that "My idea was to get six great artists together and make a tiny little museum that would be on the moon."^[1] Myers attempted several times to get his project sanctioned by NASA. He claims the agency gave him the runaround and, Myers states, "They never said no, I just could not get them to say anything."^[1] Instead of going through the official channels he was forced to take the back route and try to smuggle it on board.
Myers contacted Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a non-profit group that was linking artists with engineers to create new works. Through E.A.T., Myers was introduced to some scientists from Bell Laboratories, specifically Fred Waldhauer. Using techniques normally used to produce telephone circuits, the scientists etched the drawings Myers had gathered onto small ceramic wafers. Either 16 or 20 of these wafers were created,^[1] with one going on the lunar lander and the rest, copies of the original, handed out to the artists and others involved in the project.^[4]
When NASA dithered whether the museum would be allowed onto the module, Waldhauer devised another plan. Waldhauer knew a Grumman Aircraft engineer who was working on the Apollo 12 lander module, and he proved willing to place the museum on it.^[5] Myers asked Waldhauer how he would know if the museum actually made it onto the lander, and was told that the person who worked for Grumman would send him a telegram when the wafer was in place. At 3:35 p.m. on November 12, 1969, less than two days before Apollo 12 took off, Myers received a telegram at his house from Cape Canaveral, Florida stating "YOUR ON' A.O.K. ALL SYSTEMS GO," and signed "JOHN F."^[1]
The existence of the work was not revealed until Myers informed The New York Times which ran an article on the story two days after Apollo 12 left the moon and two days before they splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.^[6]

Artworks

Supposedly one of the 15 or 19 copies of the Moon Museum.

	Artwork Placement
Warhol	Rauschenberg	Novros
Myers	Oldenberg	Chamberlain

There are six artworks located on the ceramic tile, each one in black and white only. Starting in the top center is a single line by Robert Rauschenberg. To its right is a black square with thin white lines intersecting, resembling a piece of circuitry, by David Novros. Below it is John Chamberlain's contribution, a template pattern which also resembles circuitry. In the lower middle is a geometric variation on Micky Mouse, by Claes Oldenberg, a popular motif for the artist at that time. Myers created the work in the lower left, a computer-generated drawing of a "linked symbol" called "Interconnection". Finally, the last drawing in the upper left is by Andy Warhol. He created a stylized version of his initials which, when viewed at certain angles, can appear as a rocket ship or a penis.^[1][2] "He was being the terrible bad boy." says Myers.^[1] Warhol's work is covered up by a thumb in the image often associated with the Moon Museum, but other images with the drawing visible can be found.^[6]
Both John Chamberlain and Claes Oldenberg have confirmed through representatives that they did in fact take part in the moon museum and contributed drawings to the effort.^[4]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Who is John F.?, History Detectives, PBS, Season 8, Episode 1, June 7, 2010. Accessed July 14, 2010
2. ^ ^{a b} Secret Museum On The Moon’s Surface. UCSD Libraries. March 1, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2010
3. ^ The Moon Museum: First Space Art Object Lands at Tampa Museum of Art. Tampa Museum of Art June 18 - August 1, 2010. Accessed July 15, 2010.
4. ^ ^{a b} Moye, David. Warhol in Space: Apollo 12 Secretly Carried Art to the Moon. AOL news. June 17, 2010, Accessed July 14, 2010.
5. ^ PBS' HISTORY DETECTIVES PUTS A QUESTION TO THE NATION: IS ANDY WARHOL’S ART ON THE MOON?. PBS. June 7, 2010. Accessed July 14, 2010
6. ^ ^{a b} Holy ^%$&! Man Smuggles Art To The &%#$ing Moon! Greg.com. February 8, 2008. Accessed July 14, 2010

See also

• Fallen Astronaut

External links

• Original New York Times article
• Copy of Telegram Frosty Myers received
• Clear image of the moon Museum from the Tampa Museum of Art

taxonomedia project

A Taxonomedia (Consuelo Rozo and Vanina Hofman) interview by Raquel Herrera posted at the new media fix website can be found here.

We, in Taxonomedia, regard documentation as a privileged tool to explain an important artistic production which hardly could be conserved through other kinds of strategies. On the one hand, because of the essentially economic questions we have previously mentioned. The conservation projects that suggest solutions such as emulators and migrations are beyond the scope of most museums and media spaces, and probably their efforts in that direction are not sustainable in the medium or long run. On the other hand, there are expressions within art based on technologies that don’t “allow for their conservation”, and if presented with this situation, the artist’s intention must be respected. Finally, also, through their documentation and subsequent availability, the work might be able to survive as a concept and be recreated in other works. Projects like Variable Media delve into the conservation of the integrity of the work regardless of its medium, clearly considering media art within the field of conceptual art, emphasizing a perspective which many would find inadmissible, but is interesting to us.
(...)

To be able to access this material as it was in this day represents a huge time investment, a specific budget, provided also that the artist wants to work on that again. In some cases this might mean counting on programmers and developers to generate platforms that allow the piece to work seamlessly in current environments. We have translated a paradigmatic case undertaken for the exhibition Seeing Double (Guggenheim Museum) about the work The Erl King by Roberta Friedman and Grahame Weinbren. Examples like these are feasible if there’s an institution like a museum, a specialized archive or a project that might take charge. It is also possible, if the artist was willing to undertake it herself, as could be in the example you mentioned. She might add some ideas to the piece she didn’t include in the past and the technology she might have to use might also alter the particularities of the work. So we can imagine The Intruder might be different if manipulated, although we leave this aspect at the hands of the artist.

Reinterpretation and documentation are ways of contact with many of the previous works, but unfortunately the experience is hardly repeatable.

nonlinear history

Andrey Smirnov's Nonlinear History (of audiovisual composition) features some long forgotten yet amazing equipment...ppts and videos can be downloaded here

Entangled. Technology and the Transformation of Performance

Chris Salter's Entangled, Technology and the Transformation of Performance, explores technology’s influence on artistic performance practices in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Entangled, Chris Salter shows that technologies, from the mechanical to the computational—from a "ballet of objects and lights" staged by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1917 to contemporary technologically enabled "responsive environments"—have been entangled with performance across a wide range of disciplines. Salter examines the rich and extensive history of performance experimentation in theater, music, dance, the visual and media arts, architecture, and other fields; explores the political, social, and economic context for the adoption of technological practices in art; and shows that these practices have a set of common histories despite their disciplinary borders.

sample chapters available

lacma's art and technology project (1967-1971) catalogue

the long out-of print catalogue of LACMA's Art and Technology project (1967-1971) is available for free download here:

http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/MWEB/archives/artandtechnology/at_home.asp