Space Chic: Artist Will Paint in Zero Gravity

Michael Reilly — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:13:54 PDT

For his new project "Life in Space," artist Nasser Azam plans to paint aboard a "vomit comet"-style airplane ride while in zero-g 23,000 feet in the air. During the twenty-second intervals of weightlessness he plans to complete several large paintings, and he'll be outfitted in a designer jumpsuit put together by Alexander McQueen — very posh. Azam says he likes to explore the connection between art and science, and that he's heavily influenced by Edvard Munch, but you've got to wonder whether the lack of gravity might have his work looking more like Jackson Pollock. (from BBC)

Dancing in Zero Gravity to New Age Music Will Help Us Evolve

Kevin Kelly — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 11:00:14 PST

Today a 727 "Vomit Comet" lifted off from Las Vegas in order to film a scene of a woman dancing in zero gravity for an upcoming science fiction film called Stardance. Filmmaker Jeanne Robinson (choreographer and wife of scifi writer Spider Robinson) won the trip after showing this astonishingly bad preview video at the Heinlein Centennial earlier this year in Kansas City. It's a little bit John Tesh, and a little bit yoga. Here's the whoa: it's funded, and set to screen at an IMAX theater near you.

The movie would be based on Robinson's 1976 novella "Stardance," and the goal of the film is "to bring for the first time real null-gravity dance to film."

Plus, they're shooting it on large-format film stock, and they hope to screen it on IMAX screens across the glove. The storyline involves human being evolving into higher beings called homo caelestis, and part of that evolution involves dancing in zero gravity. According to the Stardance Project website:

The story follows astronaut Treya Anderson, a full time maintenance worker on a space station orbiting earth in the not too distant future. Both a dancer and an engineer, she chose science and space over a career in dance, but now, circumstances and opportunity will combine to allow her to merge her two passions into transcendent art with cosmic consequences.

Um. Maintenance workers in space who dance the human race into evolution? How on earth did this project get greenlit based on a trailer with new age music and cheesy Photoshop stills? The world may never know. But soon you'll get to see it — in glorious IMAX. We are strangely excited.

A Joyous Stardance for the New Year! [Biology In Science Fiction]

io9: vomit comet

Space Chic: Artist Will Paint in Zero Gravity

Dancing in Zero Gravity to New Age Music Will Help Us Evolve