Moffett a space-age playground for ‘Yuri’s Night’
Stunt planes, hip-hop, crazy art and more mark NASA celebration in honor of Russian cosmonaut
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Archive for the ‘Press’ Category
RGR featured on the cover of the Mountain View Post
Friday, April 16th, 2010NBC Bay Area: The Raygun Gothic Rocketship at NASA Ames for Yuri’s Night
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010The Rocketship was a huge hit at this weekend’s Yuri’s Night Festival at the NASA Ames Research Center ion Mountain View California.
First press is coming in now…check it out!
The Raygun Gothic Rocketship featured on the 2010 Maker Faire poster
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
The Raygun Gothic Rocketship featured on the NASA Ames website
Friday, March 26th, 2010Click HERE for the full story
photo by Sean Donnelly
A 40-foot high rocket from the future and a 20-foot tall bird with its head and wings on fire will light up on Saturday, April 10, 2010 at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Is this a science experiment gone awry? No, it’s all part of Yuri’s Night.
Yuri’s Night is a world space party that commemorates the anniversary of the first human spaceflight, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961 and the first space shuttle mission 20 years later. An estimated 10,000 people are expected to attend the Bay Area celebration from noon to midnight.
During this “mash-up” of music, dance, technology, art and space, two large-scale art installations that previously have been exhibited at the Burning Man Festival will be displayed: the “Raygun Gothic Rocketship” and “Angel of the Apocalypse.”
What these two giant sculptures share in common is that they both were built by dozens of team members collectively working together.
Sean Orlando, one of three lead artists for “Raygun Gothic Rocketship,” said the effort required the work of 85 artists, engineers, fabricators, scientists and computer engineers. “One of the remarkable things about this group of people is how few issues there are,” said Orlando. “When it comes to actual work and the design process, it truly is very collaborative.”
The retro-futuristic rocket stands four stories high, weighs 3,500 pounds and requires a crane with a 40-foot, 5-ton installation capability. The structure is divided into three sections: a life sciences bio lab, engineering room, crew quarters and a command module. Interior details include “alien specimens” in the life sciences bio lab, a zero gravity bed and a deployable rocket launcher.
“We’re sci-fi geeks who like to play with machines and tools,” said lead artist David Shulman. “Our inspiration was from the 1930s through early 1950s when technology was within sight, but the reality of what it would entail or the Cold War pessimism had not set in yet.”
The term, “Raygun Gothic” is an artistic style coined by science fiction author William Gibson. Orlando said the name refers to how people in the past imagined the future.
“We’re thrilled to be able to bring it to a NASA facility and share it with people who are interested in space exploration—both the serious side and the fun side,” said Orlando.
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The Rocketship scheduled to land @ Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2010
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010The Rocketship and Tom Sepe’s RGR Moon Rover have been cleared for landing at Yuri’s Night, NASA Ames in Mountain View, California on planet Earth. April 9-10, 2010 C.E.
BEST OF BURNING MAN ‘09 from LA Weekly
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
View the whole slideshow here: http://www.laweekly.com/slideshow/view/28436756/13
Fire in the sky
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Rocket Science
If there was one piece of artwork that dominated conversation this year it was “Raygun Gothic Rocketship,” a kitschy, retro-futuristic 40-foot rocket that looked like something out of a Jules Verne movie adaptation circa 1957. The excitement about the piece was centered on its scheduled “launch” set for Friday night. Debate about this “rocket launch” raged throughout BRC:
“It’s a joke. There’s no way they’re getting that thing off the ground.”
“I heard they’re only hoping to get it up four or five feet.”
“If they actually try to launch that thing, I’m sure it’ll fail miserably.”
“They’re probably just going to blow it up.”
“Well, whatever happens, I’m sure it’ll be cool.”
Read the rest of the article here: http://www.newsreview.com/reno/content?oid=1211038
Raygun Gothic Rocketship Launch — Burning Man 2009
Thursday, September 10th, 2009Link to Vimeo page: http://vimeo.com/6528197
Burning Man 2009 Photo Gallery
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
See entire photo gallery here: SFGate.com
Artists riding rocket to Burning Man
Friday, August 28th, 2009Boadway is part of a more than 60-person team of artists, scientists, engineers, and builders creating a sculpture resembling a rocket ship that will premiere at this year’s Burning Man Project, the annual gathering in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert that focuses on radical self reliance and large-scale installation art.
This year’s festival will begin Monday and run through Sept. 7, with the Oakland artists unveiling their creation in a 15-minute spectacle Sept. 4.
Led by Orlando and fellow artists Nathaniel Taylor and David Shulman, the rocket ship idea was conceived in napkin drawings and has a retro aesthetic meant to conjure a time when space travel was still a fantasy.
The artists wanted to “focus on a time of pre-space travel, when humans still imagined themselves living and traveling through space “… the future of the human species was very romanticized,” Orlando said.
Read article here: http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_13208664?IADID
