An artistic exhibition propelled by the scientific data of NASA exceeded the Salesforce tower in San Francisco, California, throughout December 2024. Night visitors appreciated “synchronicity”, a 20 -minute video art from Greg Niemeyer, which used an open year of NASA satellites and other sources to bring the rhythms of the Baie region.
The “synchronicity” data included atmospheric data from NASA and the NOAA Go (geostationary operational environmental satellites), data on the health of the vegetation of the NASA Landsat program and the extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of the Soho Sun (sopheric and helicopheric observatory). CHELLE GENTEMANN, the scientist of the program for Bureau of the scientific data chief Within the Directorate of the NASA Scientific Mission, advised Niemeyer with data integration into the room.
“Artists have a lot to contribute to science,” said Gentemann. “Not only can they play a role in the real scientific process, looking at things in a different way that will lead to new questions, but they are also essential to involve more people in science.”
The history of NASA to engage with the artists dates back to the launch in 1962 of the NASA art program, which has teamed up with artists to bring the agency’s achievements to a wider audience and tell the story of NASA in a different and unexpected way. Artists such as Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Annie Leibovitz have created works inspired by NASA missions. THE The art program was relaunched in September 2024 With a pair of murals evoking the fear of spatial exploration for the Artemis generation.
The use of NASA data in works of art emerged a few decades after the launch of the NASA art program. Several internal agency programs, such as NASA scientific visualization studioCreate superb animated works from scientific data. In the audio field, the Chandra X -ray observatory of NASA manages the Sound project universe To convert astronomy data into “sonifications” for the pleasure of listening to the public.
Collaborations with external artists help bring NASA data to an even wider audience. NASA’s commitment to open science – to make as easy as possible for the public to access scientific data – considerably reduces obstacles to creatives who seek to merge their art with advanced sciences.
Another recent mixture of data and NASA art came when the digital art gallery Artechouse created “Beyond the Light”, An immersive video experience of 26 minutes featuring images accessible to the public of the James Webb space telescope and the Hubble space telescope. The experience has been taking place in various places Artechouse since September 2023. The massive potential for the art of integrating scientific data promises to combine even more of these collaborations between NASA and artists in the future.
“One of the integral values of open science is to provide more people to participate in science,” said Gentemann. “I think that in an interest in the public by the way this art is done, they also start to play with scientific data, perhaps for the first time. In this way, art has the power to create new scientists. »»
Learn more about the sciences open to NASA in https://science.nasa.gov/open-science.
By Lauren Leese
Web content strategist for Bureau of the scientific data chief