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Spacelife
VR environment / installation
2022
The Spacelife VR project is inspired by some thoughts on life in space and is freely inspired by this theme without, however, retracing its concepts in the strict sense. Instead, it is an abstract audiovisual environment that can be explored with virtual reality technology and which presents a series of objects made up of particle systems. The viewers can then immerse themselves in a visually rich and dynamic world and thus discover perceptually unique points of view.
Concept
New technologies may perhaps help humans become more fit for life in space. However, other life forms have a better chance of survival in space: tardigrades1, cyborg bacteria2 and xenobots3. Scientists could modify existing creatures or create new ones so that they can survive in deep space for a long time. It would then be possible to launch of a swarm of light-propelled femto probes containing creatures or perhaps elements that are able to generate life on a celestial body4. This is a non-anthropocentric point of view: the fundamental thing is that life, and not just human life, can continue beyond planet Earth.
Notes
1 Tardigrades survive exposure to space in low Earth orbit, sciencedirect.com, 2008
2 ’Cyborg’ bacteria deliver green fuel source from sunlight, bbc.com, 2017
3 Meet the xenobot: world’s first living, self-healing robots created from frog stem cells, cnn.com, 2020
4 A New Physics Theory of Life, quantamagazine.org, 2014
Bibliography
Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, George M. Church and Ed Regis, Basic Books, 2014
Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation, Jim Baggott, Oxford University Press, 2015
The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology, Pier Luigi Luisi, Cambridge University Press, 2016
The Vital Question, Nick Lane, Faber and Faber, 2016
Videography
UVM and Tufts Team Builds First Living Robots, youtube.com, 2020
Living robots created as scientists turn frog cells into ‘entirely new life-forms’, youtube.com, 2020