Speculative Space Exploration

Handmade Space Journey

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"Bricolage Exploration - A space odysee" re-imagines humanity’s quest for the cosmos, blending bricolage sculpture, Tintype photography, and hand-drawn artistry.

By assembling a fictional space mission from repurposed materials and obsolete tools, the series explores the tension between ingenuity and futility. This project celebrates the excitement of human exploration while questioning the ways groundbreaking technology is often misapplied, overlooked, or rendered absurd.

The project unfolds across four interconnected mediums: a handcrafted Mars Rover, collodion tintypes of rocks, technical posters, and annotated prints. Together, they weave a narrative that bridges the practical and the poetic, the scientific and the artistic.

At its core, this series transforms overlooked, mundane objects into scientific curiosities, elevating the ordinary to the extraordinary. The handcrafted sculptures—built from discarded, seemingly useless materials—demonstrate both human ingenuity and the absurdity of our creations, evoking the dualities of resourcefulness and futility.

The Wetplate collodion process, an archaic photographic technique, shares uncanny similarities with the precision and aesthetics of cutting-edge cosmic photography. This juxtaposition blurs the lines between art and scientific rendering, challenging perceptions of where one ends and the other begins.

Keep Exploring

This series asks: What makes exploration meaningful? Is it the technology, the journey, or the stories we tell about it?

Are my backyard rocks any less significant than a space rock? Wouldn’t my rock, steeped in human history and connection, hold more meaning? After all, don’t they share the same cosmic origins?

This project transforms the mundane into the sublime, elevating overlooked objects to new heights of wonder. Through the lens of an 1850s photographic technique, we see parallels to the precision and awe of 21st-century super high-tech telescopes, questioning where innovation truly lies.

Annotated photography becomes both a valuable source of information and an aesthetic object—a bridge between art and science. It reflects how knowledge and beauty can coexist in every image, every story.

Exploration in the 1960s was an exercise in trial and error, relying on push-button controls and computers millions of times less powerful than the phone in my pocket. Yet those pioneers achieved wonders that remain unmatched today. What stops us from democratizing space exploration now? Who owns the cosmos? Is it the unknown that captivates us, or the human ingenuity behind every story of discovery?

Handwritten diagrams and typewritten notes blur boundaries between scientific inquiry and artistic invention—reminding us that every spacefaring dream begins as a scribble on paper.

The Intersection of Art and Science: From the Moon to the Page

Throughout history, art and science have shared an unspoken alliance—both seeking to understand and document the world around us. From Galileo’s celestial sketches to the stunning images of Earthrise captured during the Apollo missions, the boundaries between artistic expression and scientific discovery have always been porous.

Consider the photographs captured by NASA’s spacecraft. These images, meant to document and analyze, have also become iconic works of art. They adorn coffee table books, their vibrant colors and alien landscapes captivating us not only as data but as symbols of human achievement and imagination. They blur the line between observation and inspiration, existing as both scientific records and aesthetic objects.

When humanity went to the Moon, was it purely for science or was it driven by the primal urge to explore? The act of exploration is inherently artistic—a performance of curiosity, creativity, and storytelling. The Moon landings were framed as scientific missions, yet they were steeped in symbolism, capturing the collective imagination of the world.

This blend of art and science invites questions: Does the value of exploration lie in the data collected or in the stories that endure? Are we drawn to the Moon because of its scientific potential, or because it represents the unreachable made tangible?

In this project, I explore these intersections, drawing parallels between ancient technologies and cutting-edge discoveries, between the tactile and the conceptual. It’s a dialogue about how we view the unknown—not just as scientists, but as storytellers, dreamers, and creators.

Art and science are not separate pursuits. They are twin expressions of our shared desire to reach beyond what we know, capturing the infinite in both facts and wonder.

Gallery

The "Bricolage Exploration - Space Project" reflects the tension between analog processes and futuristic aspirations. This series celebrates the resourcefulness and imagination behind humanity’s cosmic ambitions while grounding them in humble, handcrafted tools and materials.

Analog processes meet futuristic visions, cosmic dreams meet improvised tools, celebrating the layman’s innovative resourcefulness. Bricolage rovers, tintypes of rocks, and scribbled diagrams remind us that progress emerges from the dance of resourcefulness and aspiration.

This series invites viewers to consider the nature of exploration—whether driven by science, curiosity, or the stories we create about the unknown. It blurs the boundaries between art and science, asking: What does it mean to venture into the cosmos with handcrafted dreams?

Please download the proposal here.