How the man behind Columbia’s river lasers is helping to put teeny-tiny art on the moon

Altogether, it’s small enough to clasp your fingers around or fit in a pocketbook. At the same time, it’s utterly too huge to begin to wrap your mind around.

Think of it as a “mini-museum,” a “kaleidoscope of life,” an “ark” bearing the essence of human culture, if you will.

And it’s going to ... the moon?

Yes, the moon.

A collection of four 2-inch-by-2-inch aluminum chambers, the “Moon Ark” is an incredibly complex vessel containing human art, music, writing, dance, technology and earthly history that will be flown to the moon and left there as a record of humanity.

Among the team that is putting the venture together: Chris Robinson, an artist known in Columbia for his plan to light up downtown Columbia’s Congaree River with laser art.

“There are organizations now that are consciously paying attention to the fact that Earth and society may be in trouble and we may not last forever ... and they want to leave some record of what we’re about. This is a form of placing that information in other places,” said Robinson, a Columbia-based artist who now chairs the art department at the University of South Carolina Beaufort. “Hopefully, some future society will pick it up and understand it.”

The Moon Ark won’t be the first art to be flown to the moon. But it will be the most complex collection by far.

It’s the product of a core team at Carnegie Mellon University and dozens of collaborators from around the world. The contents of its multilayered chambers include dozens of pieces, such as:

▪ Miniature murals, such as “Moonscape,” a metal mural by artist Dylan Vitone, which measures roughly 1.5 inches by 4.5 inches.

▪ Original music compositions, such as “Was Her Face the Moon or Sunlight?” by a collection of artists, represented by visual sound waves etched into discs.

▪ Tiny samples of ocean water, coal, rock, diamonds, arctic tern DNA, Hopi corn and other examples of earthly biology.

▪ Even a fragrance sample, created by perfumer developer Annie Buzantian.

“It’s a very hopeful project, that (says) we believe in humanity, that we believe something can last way beyond human perception of time, and that humans will be around,” said Mark Baskinger, a Carnegie Mellon design professor and co-director of the Moon Ark project along with Lowry Burgess.

The collection will be launched to the moon in a one-way trip aboard a private moon lander that also will carry robotic moon rovers in December 2019. After landing on the moon, the Moon Ark will sit there on the lander for perpetuity.

Robinson, who describes the Moon Ark as a “mini-museum,” was drawn into the project through a friend at Carnegie Mellon several years ago.

Robinson, who taught for 42 years at USC Columbia, might best be known for his in-progress laser art installation, “Southern Lights,” crisscrossing the Congaree River. Once complete, the light project is expected to shine every night for about a decade.

His part in the Moon Ark project is almost the opposite in scale, size-wise.

Robinson helped curate a collection of tiny drawings, each smaller than a pinhead, that have been etched by nanotechnology onto a disc as part of one of the ark’s chambers.

There are actually twin Moon Arks – one that will go to the moon and another that will be shown in traveling displays around the world. The moon-bound ark is currently on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.

“It’s sort of a gamble about whether anybody will ever see it on the moon,” he said. “But the exercise is interesting, and showing people the intellectual exercise throughout the world will have some benefits on Earth.”

Once it leaves the Earth, the question is whether the Moon Ark ever will be seen again – or understood.

Burgess, who calls the ark “a kaleidoscope of life,” believes so.

And whoever – or whatever – finds it, Burgess believes, will say, “‘They really tried hard to do the best that that moment could give.’ This is the best that we on Earth at this moment can deliver to the moon.”

This story was originally published October 1, 2017 at 10:00 AM with the headline "How the man behind Columbia’s river lasers is helping to put teeny-tiny art on the moon."