Jewelry for Astronauts and Space Travelers by Ezra Satok-Wolman

We have arrived at the age of space exploration and with that comes new frontiers, technology, materials and design standards. As we push further out into the solar system and beyond how will our aesthetics evolve? How will we adorn ourselves in the future? Will art be as important to people in a colony on Mars as it is to us here on Earth?
 
These questions and ideas form the central theme of the exhibition. A collection of jewelry will be presented that is intended to adorn the astronauts and space travelers of the future. Each piece meticulously produced to meet “space age standards,” with respect to material, weight, size and tensile strength. The exhibition will also include an interactive audio visual experience giving audience members a glimpse into the future of space travel. The jewelry images from the exhibition have been included in a NASA initiative to send images of art into space. These images will travel in a digital time-capsule aboard the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to the asteroid Benu to retrieve an asteroid sample and return it to earth.


 

 















Creativity is something that makes human beings unique and separates us from other living creatures. Our desire to express ourselves artistically can be traced back as far as humans go on the Earth’s timeline. Some 540,000 years ago, an ancient ancestor of modern humans took a shark tooth and carefully carved a geometric engraving on a mollusk shell. 500,000 years later the first cave paintings were produced in Indonesia and Europe. Part of the desire to express ourselves artistically may have something to do with our need as individuals to leave a mark or indication that “we” were here and existed.
 
Our desire to leave these marks has not been limited to the Earth however. In 1977, with the launching of the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, Carl Sagan and a team of fellow NASA scientists produced the “Voyager Golden Records,” that were to be included aboard both Voyager 1 and 2. The records contain sounds, music and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans who may discover them. Thus the records are seen best as time capsules. The Voyager 1 probe is currently the farthest human made object from Earth and has reached interstellar space, the region between stars where the galactic plasma is present.