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Five decades after NASA successfully landed a human on the lunar surface and returned him and crew safely to Earth with the Apollo programme (aiming for the stars with the Moon being one of several goals when the mission was first conceived), the space agency has committed to returning within five years and the next humans to set foot on there will be a woman and man, naming the follow-on series of missions Artemis, after Apollo’s twin sister and goddess of the hunt, wilderness, the Moon and childbirth.
While we are big proponents for space exploration and happy that the US isn’t poor-mouthing the budget and even bigger advocates for equal opportunity (we’re just beginning to appreciate the role that women scientists played in the background to make the first mission a reality) and finding role models but there’s something a little creepy and sinister about how the whole ambitious plan is being presented and support rallied. What do you think? Considering who the chief cheerleaders are, it comes across almost as messianic, like a second Eden. Achieving equity in representation is challenging and opportunity and accomplishment ought not be conflated with other narratives (despite our penchant for story-telling as motivation), and the further we come in our outlook we also realise how much further we have to go.

голос води

Commissioned for the 23 March annual observance of World Water Day (previously), a group of one hundred sound engineers and musicians—including the group DakhaBrakha—teamed up to create a tone poem from the waters of Ukraine, designing special accompanying instruments to capture the character of currents coursing down the Carpathians. More to explore at Calvert Journal at the link above and for those of you who missed the commemoration like we did, it’s your cue to appreciate and collect the music of your local body of water.

foot traffic

Spanning the Dong River that divides the historic city centre, Jishou in Hunan Province in south-central China has an impressive new art gallery composed of two stacked bridges. Preserving public right-of-way as a pedestrian path and most direct route through the bustling downtown, the museum intercedes as a part of residents’ daily routine, incorporating arts and culture as something commonplace rather than the reserve of a separate, designated destination.  Learn more at Design Boom at the link above.

privatsphäre

Nearly a year after sweeping privacy and data-retention legislation went into effect in the European Union, one dominant force in shaping the architecture of the on-line world is committing to open a privacy and safety engineering hub in München, to demonstrate the company’s pledge to take security, integrity and demography seriously.
It’s one thing to be exposed to the same commercials ad nauseum but quite a different matter to be denied a job interview or insurance coverage or detoured away from a given destination by dint of the same inscrutable predilections. Failure to comply with current regulations could result in fees upwards of four percent of the internet giant’s global revenue. Let’s hope that this venture helps promote German and EU expectations for privacy and foster a better corporate culture that’s not enabled and entitled to monetise our consent.

artist depiction

Paleofuture recommends a new documentary on a trio of artists who while they might have been hitherto mostly nameless have played an oversized role in helping the public to imagine and envision not only space stations and orbiting colonies (previously) but also far off worlds that don’t quite neatly resolve.
Commissioned by NASA, the retro-futurist, Mid-Century Modern style of Chesley Bonestell, Don Davis, Rick Guidice has gone a long way to influence and inform our dreams and expectations of space travel and is a good heuristic tool for talking about science communication and outreach in general. Make some time to get to know better the artists who’ve helped engineer aspirations and imaginations. See a preview and read an excerpt of an interview at the link up top.

free to use & reuse

Via the always resourceful Kottke’s Quick Links, we are directed once again to the growing archives of the Library of Congress (previously), whose curatorial staff—like any of us—appreciates a good image of the feline variety (go here to read about proto-meme-maker and cat fancier Harry Whittier Frees) and expects the readership to put these cats back out into circulation. This is also a good gateway and point of departure for exploring the stacks and discovering more of the library’s collections.