The Moon Gallery Foundation is working on a lunar art gallery
that will help to construct the first lunar base and permanent museum on Earth’s only natural satellite.
One hundred artworks from around the world will be combined onto a 10 cm × 10 cm x 1 cm grid tray
that will fly to the Moon by 2025 as part of an international endeavour.
The Moon Gallery aspires to broaden humanity’s cultural conversation beyond the Earth
. In a test trip in 2022,
the gallery will meet the cosmos for the first time in low Earth orbit.
Art Meets The Cosmos
Nanoracks, a private in-space service provider, is helping with the test flight
. The gallery is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in February 2022 aboard a Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply mission.
The gallery’s art initiatives will reach the final frontier of human habitat in space, marking the Moon Gallery’s historical meeting point with the cosmos.
Reaching low Earth orbit on the way to the Moon is an important first step toward expanding our cultural conversation into space.
The Moon Gallery will be incorporated into the NanoLab technical payload,
a module for space research experiments, during its return journey.
The gallery’s character will provide a varied range of materials and behaviours for camera observations and NanoLab performance tests.
In exchange, Moon Gallery artists will have the opportunity to learn more about how their artworks perform in space. These findings will provide a firm foundation for future Moon Gallery missions as well as a great learning experience for future space artists.
The demonstration flight to the International Space Station is a precursor mission that will help to better understand the future potential for art in space while also enhancing collaboration between the art and space industries.
In a world of collaboration, communication, and connection, our every observation, analysis, and thinking reflect influences from our surroundings and the Universe, allowing us to explore the real, the imagined, and the unknown.
Moon Gallery artists will be able to learn more about how their artworks perform in space in exchange.
These discoveries will serve as a solid foundation for future Moon Gallery missions,
as well as a valuable learning experience for future space artists.
The demonstration voyage to the International Space Station is a forerunner mission that will assist researchers in better grasping the future potential for art in space
while also fostering collaboration between the art and space industries.
A New Frontier
In a world of collaboration, communication, and connection, our every observation, analysis, and thinking reflect influences from our surroundings and the Universe,
allowing us to explore the real, the imagined, and the unknown.
Moon Gallery artists will be able to learn more about how their artworks perform in space in exchange.
These discoveries will serve as a solid foundation for future Moon Gallery missions, as well as a valuable learning experience for future space artists.
The demonstration voyage to the International Space Station is a forerunner mission that will assist researchers in better grasping the future potential for art in space while also fostering collaboration between the art and space industries.
Every observation, analysis, and thought in a world of collaboration, communication, and connectivity reflects influences from our surroundings and the Universe, allowing us to explore the real,
the imagined, and the unknown.
The Singapore Centre for 3D Printing at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) was used for early-stage prototyping and design iterations of
the ‘Structure and Reflectance’ cube (SC3DP).
Moon Gallery is Backed by The NAMIC
The National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster (NAMIC),
a national program office dedicated to accelerating the use and commercialization of additive manufacturing technology, supported this collaborative initiative.
Previously, the NTU Singapore team at SC3DP created a few Moon-Cube iterations
utilizing metal 3D printing in various materials such as Inconel and Stainless Steel to determine which material was best suited.
The most recent version of the cube contains crystals that have been infused into the cube using additive manufacturing technology and are visible to the naked eye due
to minute changes in surface roughness that reflect light in
different directions.
Bridging the gap with 3dprinting
“Additive Manufacturing is well suited to achieving this level of control over solid crystal structure.”
Dr Matteo Seita, Nanyang Assistant Professor, NTU Singapore, is the Principal Investigator overseeing the project for the current cube design.
“The work was created using ‘laser powder bed fusion technology,’
a metal additive manufacturing process that allows us to control the surface roughness by varying the laser parameter,” he said.
“Like people, materials have a complicated “structure” originating from their history—
the sequence of activities that have shaped its constituent parts—which underpins their distinctions,”
Dr Seita explained.
This structure frequently hides little of the underlying quality in materials or people behind an outward façade.
The cube is a material representation of a human’s complicated complexity,
encapsulated in a metal block made up of two crystals with distinct reflectivity and complementary shapes.”
“The optical contrast on the cube surface from the crystals provides a sophisticated
geometry that symbolizes man’s duality:
the complexity of hidden cognition and manifested emotion,”
Ms Lakshmi continued.
This duality is reflected in the Moon’s surface,
where one side is visible while the other has been concealed from
human eyes for aeons until space travel eventually permitted us to see it.
The brightness of the Moon’s visible side is determined by
its position in relation to the Earth and the Sun.
As a result, what we see is a consequence of our point of view.”
The concept of human duality
In this cube,
the hidden structure of materials,
humans, and the Moon
are portrayed as light reflections
through art and science.
The concept of human duality is expressed in the
Structure & Reflectance cube,
which is represented by two crystals with differing reflectance and appears
to the spectator as a function of their perspective.
“Space is humanity’s next frontier,”
stated Dr Ho Chaw Sing, NAMIC’s Co-Founder and Managing Director. Lakshmi’s 3D printed cube, being the only Singaporean among a chosen few from around the world, offers a unique perspective through the merging of art and technology.
We’re delighted to have played a little part in assisting her with her “moon-shot” project.”
Each artwork, according to Lakshmi, is a depiction of humanity’s efforts to understand the secrets of the Universe, and when combined into a single cube, embodies humanity’s unity, which transcends distinctions in culture, religion, and social rank.
The first cube face,
known as the Primary,
is divided into two triangles and portrays the Moon’s two faces,
one visible from Earth and the other hidden from view.
The Windmill, the second cube face,
has two whirling windmill patterns,
one clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, which reflect our existence, energy, and time.
The Dromenon, the third cube face, is a labyrinth of nested squares that reflects the layers that we
—as space explorers—are unravelling to solve the Universe’s enigma.
The Nautilus, the fourth cube face, symbolizes the swirling form of our DNA that distinguishes each of us,
a shape mirrored in the shape of our galaxy.
