Kirsten Johannsen.
Independent Artist
German Media Artist
Art in Microgravity Environments: Impacts, Aesthetics, Benefits, Practicality
About the Research
With her research Kirsten Johannsen wishes to continue her artistic investigations into the complexities of nature, its time and its passages. Her interest is concentrated on the way “home” will be defined in the future. Her study explores psychological and perceptive transformations astronauts detect during long duration spaceflights into the extreme environment of the universe.
In outer space humans are dropped through an infinite, expanding space, with no centre or horizon for any orientation. The non- Euclidian outlook assumes that an observer always carries a self-moving system of coordinates inside him/herself. Consequently humans have to develop new strategies of spatial orientation and communication. New designs for objects and tools will have to include research about the shape and functionality of microgravity as well as the use of these tools and objects from various perspectives and the limitations of their material parts.
The study will trace the potential development of a Nomadic Nature Kit, which suggests the purpose and the design of portable garden systems, used as recreational and personalized art objects for future spacefarers. In fact, perhaps this microgravity tools, could relate to the Garden of Paradise, or the beginning of the micro-cosmos, but the real purpose would be to link the home-planet Earth with the unknown environment of the universe.
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About the Researcher
Kirsten Johannsen lives and works in Berlin, Germany. She exhibits worldwide. Some of her objects and installations are in the art collections of the ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Museum Ludwig Köln and Neue National Galerie Berlin | Germany. Johannsen has lectured at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and at the Bauhaus University, Weimar | Germany.
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