In 1969, a “museum” was established on the moon. A tiny wafer attached to the leg of a lunar landing module contained works by artists including Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Claes Oldenburg. Forty-six years later, the moon is ready for a new exhibit, this time, featuring your artwork.
“Moon Drawings,” a project at the Carnegie Mellon University has put out a call for 10,000 drawings to be included in an “ark” that will travel to the moon via a Space X Falcon 9 rocket next year. The drawings will be micro-etched on a tiny sapphire disc as part of a larger sculpture that will serve as a “Cultural Heritage Site” on the lunar surface.
If all this sounds too esoteric, you only need to know this: YOU (or anyone 13 years old and over) can submit a drawing, a doodle, or a scribble that will travel 238,900 miles into outer space and will remain on Earth’s satellite forever. A few drawings (galactic conditions permitting) may even be etch-a-sketched on lunar soil by a specially designed rover.
As of this writing, over 4,000 spots are available on the disc but today—7 May 2015—at 11:59 EST is the hard deadline.
Gaining artistic immortality just takes a few minutes. Simply go to the project’s website, (maybe skim the interesting but lengthy technical overview and save its philosophical unpacking for later) and doodle away.
Don’t set your sights too high: There is neither the time nor the technology to create mankind’s greatest artistic opus. All participants are limited by the project’s rather basic drawing tool, which allows only a single, continuous line stroke.
That simplicity is by design, explains Golan Levin, an artist and educator, and the Moon Drawings’ co-creator. “The tool actually prevents a sophisticated rendering,” he says. “There may be some experts who may create some incredibly daunting drawings that may discourage some people. By giving people the limit of a single line, it enforces a rough quality for everybody. There’s already a Warhol in the moon. This is about celebrating everyday people participating in a way that brings them to moon.”