Eyal Gever
Eyal Gever
Eyal Gever, the creative mind behind the #Laugh project, stands with his 'Waterdancer' installation
The #Laugh ios app, that will result in the first piece of art to be created in outer space when it is 3D-printed on the International Space Station, has launched today.
Users around the world will get the chance to enter in to the competition to have their laugh played in space. With an Apple product, people can record their own organic laugh on the app and share it with their friends. The clip with the most likes after one month will be sent to the International Space Station to be 3D-printed and then released into orbit.
Eyal Gever, the Israeli artist behind the project, is known for his 3D-printed sculptures based on moments in time. Using just a palette of code, he develops life-like digital simulations of moments I time from which he fabricates 3D-printed sculptures and installations.
#Laugh first began in 2014, when Gever was contacted by Made in Space, the NASA contractor founded in 2010. Made in Space are looking to ‘enable humanity’s future in space’ and offered Gever the opportunity to become the first artist to make art in space. While artworks have previously been sent into space in 1969 (Moon Museum), by a group comprising Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg, and 1977 (Golden Record), by a team led by Carl Sagan, this will be the first piece physically created in space.
Gever wanted the subject of the project to have universal appeal, that was neither country nor culturally-specific. Suli Breaks, a spoken word poet and friend of Gever’s, suggested the #Laugh concept – the most human sound of all. Thus, the project to create a 3D sculpture fabricated from a sound simulation of crowd-sourced laughter was born.
#Laugh
The #Laugh app will result in the first piece of art to be created in outer space.
“The earliest cave paintings were of human hands which were a way of proclaiming and celebrating the presence of humanity,” said Gever. “#Laugh will be the 21st century version of that – a mathematically-accurate encapsulation of human laughter, simply floating through space, waiting to be discovered.”
Submissions for the #Laugh contest will close on New Year’s Eve, with the winner being announced in January. The #Laugh sculpture will then be 3D-printed in February. Gever will send the completed design file from his studio in Tel Aviv to NASA’s Operations Support Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. It will then be sent via satellite uplink to the International Space Station’s additive manufacturing facility, where it will be printed. After it is printed, the ‘#Laugh star’ will be sent into orbit, among real-life stars.
