Living Light
by Beyond Earth
Exploring new frontiers of art, space, and biology in collaboration with Space Perspective, the
world’s first luxury spaceflight experience company.

Living Light, an artwork designed for spaceflight, combines biology, artificial intelligence, and aerospace. It explores the connections between our blue planet and the boundlessness of outer space. Beyond Earth modeled the design after the vast biodiversity of aquatic life, based on the design of Spaceship Neptune named after planet Neptune and the Roman god of the sea. The artwork traveled to space, June 18, 2021 on Neptune One, Space Perspective’s inaugural test flight.

Concept image of Living Light – Learning from nature, co-creating with space
Space Image: NASA Astronaut Photograph processed by Robert Simmon

The depths of the ocean reveal an endless frontier of Earth’s biology, where many of the inhabitants create and use light in beautiful, often mesmerizing ways. These marine creatures are sometimes referred to as the aliens of the sea. Utilizing the iridescent and luminescent properties of nature, Living Light entered the dark abyss of space, signaling and illuminating its surroundings. It highlights the natural world and amplifies life’s splendor. This lifelike being, employing natural principles, co-creates with space while proving that life is destined to expand beyond our atmosphere.

To create a one-of-a-kind aquatic organism, Beyond Earth researched thousands of aquatic life forms to create a dataset of biological structures that float, move, and glow in the ocean as if traveling in space. The image dataset was used for machine learning to generate the inner organ designs for Living Light, a method that combines biomimicry and artificial intelligence. Hundreds of artistic images of new imaginary space organisms were generated. Living Light is the summation of various aquatic species, blending bioluminescence, fluorescence, structure, and motion of numerous sea creatures into one organism. The final design, including the inner organs and outer membrane were assembled at the Kennedy Space Center.

Dry run test for Neptune One
Credit: Space Perspective / Beyond Earth.

Neptune One Spaceballoon/ Living Light preparing for take-off
(Credit: Space Perspective / Beyond Earth)

On June 18, 2021, Space Perspective’s Neptune One test spaceflight, a full-size capsule simulator powered by a space balloon, carried the artwork to above 99% of the Earth’s atmosphere. The movement of spaceflight triggered color and light shifts within the iridescent and fluorescent materials used in the design. Such changes that occurred – both internally and externally – not only made the vessel lifelike, but also illustrated various transformational experiences when traveling beyond Earth. The artwork travelled above the curvature of our beautiful planet against the blackness of space above the rich colors of the Earth below.

Neptune One on Shuttle Landing Facility, Kennedy Space Center
Credit: Space Perspective / Beyond Earth

Sparkling with excitement, Living Light embarked on a journey to space. It ventured to a new world beyond Earth to return transformed, offering a new perspective of Earth. This quest has forever changed our protagonist, a metaphor for bringing humankind to space and a celebration of the dawn of commercial space travel. Launched from the Space Coast this sea-space creature will sail to low Earth orbit and return to the sea of its origins.

View of Earth through Living Light, inside Neptune One at 100,000 feet
Credit: Space Perspective / Beyond Earth

Living Light from Beyond Earth on Vimeo.

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About Beyond Earth: Beyond Earth is an all-female international transdisciplinary artist collective co-founded by Richelle Gribble, Yoko Shimizu, and Elena Soterakis. Our mission is to explore the frontiers of art, space, and biology through space-bound artworks. Such projects co-create with space, explore planetary themes and expand possibilities of artistic expression beyond Earth. We utilize scientific and artistic research to create and deploy artworks in space. We aim to uncover the vastness of creativity to represent a plurality of perspectives in space and envision the future of Earth. As artists, we believe that the sky is not the limit and creativity is boundless, accelerating culture and vision that transcends us.

We believe that the future of humanity expands the boundaries of Earth and beyond. Our global initiatives allow individuals, companies, and organizations to connect and explore together — advances our notion of space and our home planet.

Website: beyond-earth.org

Living Light Project: http://beyond-earth.org/projects-living-light

 Instagram + Twitter: @beyondearthart

FB: @beyondearth.art

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About Space Perspective: Space Perspective is the world’s first luxury spaceflight experience. It invites more people than has historically been possible to experience a thrillingly new and visceral perspective that expands the human consciousness – the incredibly exhilarating panoramas and scale of Earth in space. Our atmosphere stretches for 100s of miles into space, and Spaceship Neptune flies above 99% of it.

Setting a new bar in out-of-this-world thrilling experiences, as soon as late 2024 Space Perspective will escort Space Explorers gently to space inside Spaceship Neptune’s pressurized capsule propelled by a high-performance space balloon that doesn’t use rocket fuel and sees the world anew through its vast windows. The ultra-comfortable, accessible and gentle six-hour journey redefines what space and wonder travel means for the modern traveler.

Based out of Kennedy Space Center, Space Perspective is led by industry luminaries Jane Poynter and Taber MacCallum, and their expert crew who have been responsible for all human space balloon flights in the last 50 years. Poynter and MacCallum have been dubbed ‘Masters of the stratosphere,’ by Bloomberg Business Week, and MacCallum has served as Chairman of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.

Website: thespaceperspective.com

Instagram + Twitter + FB: @thespaceperspective

Art, Creativity, Science, Space, Technology