Adrian Piper, Nineteen Concrete Space-Time Infinity Pieces, 1968-69
19 loose sheets (typescript text on paper), punched, in plastic sleeves, in black ring-binder

I have touched on this before, but this still blows my mind. The US space program has taken to the moon a series of cars (Apollo 15, 16, and 17), a golf club and a couple of balls (Apollo 14), and some Playboy centerfolds tucked into some checklists the astronauts carried on their suits (Apollo 12).

These astronauts will sure show Dean Wormer what happens when you mess with the boys of Delta Tau Apollo!

Anyway, NASA, I’m holding you responsible for removing my smug sense of superiority towards lame dude-stereotype-based commercials. Now I’ll have to think, “Well, when we went to the moon in the grandest human tradition of bold exploration and boundless curiosity, and it cost like eight bazillion dollars an ounce to bring anything with us, what did we do with this opportunity? We brought cars, some golf equipment, and a few Playboy centerfolds. Fuck it, toss me a Tequiza.”

Some images from Albert Schwichtenberg’s 1962 paper “Space Medicine and Astronaut Selection”.

The Brooklyn Space Program’s weather balloon bursts. (Video.)

From 3 Ton Gallery.

Off Isla Socorro. From NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, #934, 1962
Oil on Board

Be sure to see a comprehensive collection of his work online here, his photography (comprised mainly of pictures of his wife), and some pictures of his home.

Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times during her three day spaceflight in Vostok 6 in 1963. First woman in space!

From the cover of the first edition of Heinlein’s Have Space Suit — Will Travel (1958). Illustrated by Ed Emshwiller. Full cover and title page.

The first television picture of Earth from space. This NASA image was taken on April 1, 1960 by TIROS 1.

Another Science Fiction is the title of Megan Prelinger’s upcoming book featuring advertisements from the era of the great Space Race. If her name sounds familiar, it might be through her work on the Prelinger Library.

In a NY Times feature on the book, Prelinger states:

These images suggest that the furthest reach of what humankind hoped to find in space was in fact the very essence of infinity.

The above illustration is by Willi K. Baum. For more science and tech ads of the 50’s and 60’s, peruse this huge flickr set.

Another Science Fiction is currently available for preorder at Amazon.

Such drawings (and many he has made are in this category) cannot be directly translated into buildings, nor, I imagine, are they intended to. They are not prescriptive and illustrative of some next step, but formulations of principles, grammar, methods of thinking and working. They have much to teach in an explicit way, as I think they have taught architects like Ando, but are impossible to imitate. They have the best kind of influence in that they challenge other architects to find their own integrity, while at the same time showing that this can be achieved in architectural terms.

Might as well go with NASA.

This was among the last good finds I came across at the Providence In Your Ear, before it closed years ago. Sitting in a clearance bin were three double-disc sets of Hermann Nitsch’s massive harmonium drone.

Of the recordings, Nitsch said:

In 1968, I got a harmonium as a wedding present from my wife. From then on, I sat at the harmonium and played almost exclusively long notes that never wanted to end. I tried to listen into the infinite structure of the stars, into the unimaginable spaces searching for sound. The joy of beautiful colors, of (almost intoxicating) combinations of sound was most important but at the same time it was carried by the almost presumptuous task to conjure, to sing of, and measure the extent of cosmic space. The course of the stars were to be put to sound.

One more from the NASA Ames 1970’s Space Settlement art archive.

You can read more about the settlement project here.

A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made.