Questioning Creativity
through the Cosmos
Janet Kuypers
11/3/16
with references from prose “How Do I Get to the Moon”
and “Travel Through Space”, and poems
“From Orpheus to Nuking the Moon”, “Eleven & Two, + Eight”,
“Travel Through Space” and “Universe... Now In Color”
When I think of the future,
I think of astronomy,
space, the final frontier —
and you better believe
that outer space is so poetic
and all about the art.
NASA even had an artist in
residence, who learned
that astronomers estimate
the moon’s orbit every year
pulls the moon farther
and farther away from the earth...
So if you remember the moon
looking so big when you were young,
well, you may have been right.
Because if I think about it,
maybe I’m not a writer,
maybe I’m not an artist —
maybe I’m an observer, like
an astronomer, learning what
makes everything everything
because molecule by molecule,
we originate from stars, and that
makes us all linked by stardust.
And like all star gazers
who love astronomy,
I assume I’ll never
actually go into outer space.
But it occurred to me:
I have.
Ever talked on the radio?
Ever appeared on tv?
Because all of those signals
are shot out into space,
they continue past our earth.
towards the ends of the universe.
I wonder what other stars
have seen and heard
my poetry by now, and
I wonder if anything out there
can decode our signals
and understand what we say.
So I keep looking at the images
from Hubble, the mind-boggling
colors from galaxies and nebulas...
But NASA’s artist in residence
talked about those telescope photos.
Because when images come in,
they’re all completely digital
(a series of ones, a series of zeros)
and there’s no color at all.
Astronauts describe the cosmos
as a vast black void —
so scientists guess from the data
how outer space should look.
So they guess from radiation data,
when red is hot and blue is cold,
to make the images look the best.
These outer space images are beautiful,
but now, they’re literally an art form.
The final frontier could be creative.
Look at the evidence:
imaging in astronomy
is actually existential art.
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