Takuro Osaka – The New Viewpoint from the World – Zero G. – 2003

In 2000, my proposal, Space Art Project, was selected as one of the Feasibility Studies of NASDA (National Space Development Agency of Japan). I made experiments in microgravity generated by parabolic flight in March 2002 and 2003.

In proceeding with this project, I acquired knowledge of outer space environment by interviewing Japanese astronauts who had experienced outer space life, and I learned what they expected from art. The spiritually relaxes of the people living in outer space, which gives them the pleasure of creation.

I would like to explain the plans and to report the results of the experiments of the flights of March 2002 and 2003.

“Cosmic Spiral Top”

With it, people living in outer space may think of the connection between the double helix structure of DNA and the helical movement of the universe while enjoying its beauty.

“Cosmic Wind-Bell”

This is a gravity-free wind-bell, with which one enjoys sounds produced by a Japanese bell and instrument parts struck against one another.

“Sound Wave Sculpture”

Liquid and powder materials are stirred by sound waves to change form and to produce a graphic pattern in the space. This is “fluid art” in gravity-free space. A loudspeaker emits sine waves of 300 to 1000 Hz.

It is the work of an artist to see the world from various viewpoints.

Naturally I, whose previous works were on the theme of “the universe, life, and light”, desired to experience micro gravity. The experience of weightlessness, which I have always considered, since I was a child, as a dream, was a great excitment for me.

However, it was not wonder, but a thing as I was imagining it. Rather, having felt it natural to float, was a surprise. I remembered what the Japanese astronaut Doi said about going out of the Space Shuttle to recover a satellite :

“I did not feel fear at all, while floating in the universe.

It felt like it being very natural to be here. It is natural that human beings come out of the earth, and it was thought that it was made such.”

I felt the same thing as Mr. Doi from my small experience. And I do not think that my theme and my sense of values changed by weightlessness experience.

I think my ideas and belief system are looked at more clearly. Astronaut Ms. Chiaki Mukai have said that she was able to feel the beauty of parabola when throwing a thing in a garbage can after coming back from weightlessness environment. Non-ordinary experience reveals beauty in every day life, or this is telling that it is an important method of understanding every day.

There is not negative to a sense of values there, and the discovery from the different side is shown in it. And a spread and the possibility are not only in an art but in all creative work. By performing meditation and manufacture of a work in the new environment called weightlessness, I think that the world where the human beings itself and human beings are placed can be seen from a different viewpoint. If the meaning and the new way of life of our existence can be shown through a work, which is our aim, it will have a big meaning.