Story highlights
A sculpture inspired by laughter will be the first piece of 3D printed art in space
Social media will decide the winning laugh
CNN
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Space travel remains a distant reality for most of the world’s population. But, next year, the sound and shape of your laughter could make it aboard the International Space Station. A new project by Israeli artist Eyal Gever called “#Laugh” invites members of the public to download an app that generates a unique “star,” or digital 3D sculpture, based on the sound of their own recorded laughter.
Judged by popular online vote, the winning design will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) and printed using a pre-installed 3D printer. The project is a collaboration between the artist and UK app developers Platoon and Made in Space.
In 2013 Made in Space worked with NASA to install the first 3D printer in ISS and, later the following year, the team were able to print their first object.
“I think we can confidently say this will be the first sculptural art made in space,” Spencer Pitman, Made in Space’s product strategy director, wrote in a statement for CNN.
“More importantly, ‘#Laugh’ uses some of the best things that humanity ever created to reflect our culture,” Pitman added.
Gever often works with energy – such as sounds and movements – to create sculptures. Laughter generates a significant amount of energy and allowed Gever to produce a variety of shapes and forms.
“Lately, the world seems to be dominated by racism and the rise of right wing politics. Laughter is something we can all do, and that unifies us,” Gever told CNN.
Invisible Creature
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) released a set of "travel posters" depicting various cosmic destinations. This poster shows Mars as a habitable world. The posters -- the brainchild of The Studio, the design and strategy team at JPL -- are a way to celebrate the discovery of planets. JPL visual strategist David Delgado says of the designs: "All of these far off places are hard to get to, but they are there. The immediate thought was, if we could go there someday, what would it be like?"
Invisible Creature
Once every 175 years Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune align. NASA's
Voyager mission was designed to take advantage of this alignment in the late 1970s and the 1980s.
Invisible Creature
Enceladus' icy jets have a pivotal role in creating Saturn's E-ring. Other findings from
NASA's Cassini mission show strong evidence of a global ocean and hydrothermal activity beyond Earth.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ceres is the closest dwarf planet to the Sun and the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Could the planet be a future rest stop enroute to Jupiter?
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
This poster imagines the "best" vantage point on Venus, to spot the
Mercury Transit -- or when Mercury comes between the Sun and Earth.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a surface shaped by rivers and lakes of liquid ethane and methane. In this depiction, visitors could paddle through the
Kraken Mare.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jupiter's icy moon
Europa is believed to conceal a global ocean of salty liquid water twice the volume of Earth's oceans.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
In 1995, scientists discovered 51 Pegasi b. The
exoplanet is about half the mass of Jupiter.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
HD 40307 g is an exoplanet located 42 light-years away. Its gravity would be at least twice as strong as it is on Earth.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
The extrasolar planet
Kepler-16b is billed as the "land of two suns" for the twin orbs that shine down on it.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
PSO-J318.5-22 belongs to a special class of free-floating planets, called rogue. They wander alone in the galaxy and do not orbit a parent star. The planets glow faintly from the heat of their formation until they cool down completely.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stefan G. Bucher
Is this the most incredible light show in the solar system?
Jupiter's auroras are hundreds of times more powerful than Earth's. This poster depicts the Jovian cloudscape.
The artist explained that he chose geometric elements to represent laughter because they are recognizable to everyone.
“We call them primitives. They are basic shapes from which unique sculptures can be created,” Gever explained.
But there was a bigger question for the artist: Whose laugh would represent humanity?
Eyal Gever
The laugh sculptures evolve from basic geometric shapes, such as pyramids
“Social media was the answer. I wanted the world to participate. The most popular laughter – etched in space – will be sourced from the wisdom of the crowd,” said Gever.
The Israeli artist hopes that in the future people using the app will be able to purchase sculptures of their laughs to display at home.
Eyal Gever
Gever told CNN his art is constantly evolving. In 2015, he created dancers whose body seemed to flow with water
“It is a journey from voice to code, and from code to something tangible and artistic,” said Gever.
According to the artist, laughter reminds people that there is beauty in humanity.
He sees the project as an opportunity to focus on what really matters: “Parents can immortalize their baby’s laughter. Above all this project is meant to make us think of how we want to be represented in the future.”