Slashdot Mirror
Korean Artist's Intentionally Useless Satellite To Launch This December
An anonymous reader quotes the introduction to Inhabit's article on the upcoming launch of an art project cum satellite intended to be as different as possible from conventional space hardware: "South Korean artist Song Hojun has created his own DIY satellite from scratch – and he's planning to launch it into space this coming December. Song created the satellite from assorted junk he found in back-alley electronics stores in his home town of Seoul, and over the course of six years he has finally managed to complete his space-bound project. Song's satellite cost just over $400 to make, however the cost of launching it to space is going to be a lot, lot more – over $100,000."
Seriously, we don't need more space junk. This "artist" is a griefer.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Isn't this the equivalent of putting together a non-running car out of scrap and then pushing it into the middle of the interstate and calling it 'art'?
Littering near earth orbit as a side effect of doing something useful is problematic. Littering near earth orbit intentionally and for no purpose is pretty antisocial.
He made the satellite from bent tin cans, scrap metal and vacumm cleaners found in metal boxes using a workbench.
Also, nice journalistic neutrality slashdot.
What the hell is he thinking? At least make it do *something*.
What's a cum satellite? It sounds disgusting.
OMG!!!! LIBURUL!!1!1!!
Apparently people will be able to upload messages to be flashed in Morse code by LEDs on the satellite. So it actually does do something. I'm skeptical about how easy it will be to see the LEDs from Earth, though.
Most artists, when something as dull as that, just dissasemble it/store it in the basement.
No need to use a space rocket to dispose of it.
Why can't
It is certainly important to let and fund anyone who wants to call their self an "artist" to put junk into orbit. And far better to let this jerk, I mean artist, use the funds and the launch space to feel good about himself than to actually put micro-sats or other useful technology into space. After all, they are only designed and built by mere scientists, not artists.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Why not take an empty canvas and put it on the wall? Or drive around for half a day collecting random crap, then toss it all in a public square - call it a sculpture and a 'statement'.
Funny
In all seriousness, there really should be a different word for these pomo conceptual people. Art has to have _some_ beauty in it, doesn't it? It _has_ to require talent beyond the everyday, doesn't it?
We should be able to expand art beyond renaissance-era landscapes and portraits using oil-on-canvas without debasing the term 'art' to cover everything. It make the term useless, just like some people are doing to hacking: ever since everything requiring the smallest modicum of... time? became hacking, every douchebag with time on his hands has felt welcome at HOPE, but at the same time a unique group has been diluted to nothing: something has been lost.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
do not want.
I don't know much about art but the idea of someone launching random street junk into space as a "satellite" made me laugh, and I think a big part of art is about provoking a reaction.
proof we need to take money away from idiots
Shouldn't it be Korean Artist [to Launch]Intentionally Useless Satellite
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Quit hating. You do worse daily.
Too bad we can't put an actual functional amateur satellite up with that launch fee. It's weird that he even made it look like a real satellite. Why not actually put a real satellite up or at least some crazy fantasy design (that's no ping pong ball!).
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I will pay you $100,000,000 for the copyright to your post, linux_tom.
As a collector, I've identified it as one of the first examples of an intentionally useless post on an internet forum.
Indeed, I find it to be a contemporary reponse to sensualise a holistic signifier without making light of the transforming images seen only as musical moods of the abstract expressionists. The viewer is allowed to morph an intuitive presence which can logically only lead to a deeper venerating psuedo-sculptures usually seen as output of the sequence. This work attempts to encapsulate a collaborative void without ever quite fully transforming interventions often seen as musical moods of the neo-con dadaists. Indeed, it must be an exploration to de-objectify a respective signifier whilst not exaggerating concentrations often seen as excrement of the fluxus movement.
$100 million is a small price to pay for such a sui generis work.
is getting it into orbit for that little.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
I love the concept and I love the satellite. It is beautiful. What I don't love is actually burning the rocket fuel to launch it into orbit where it will never be seen again. Please skip the last part; it detracts much more from the project than it adds. Keep the project in a perpetual state of acquiring massive amounts of funding to launch it into space, but never do it. Spend the money on top ramen for the homeless instead.
If this satellite is launched, I might try to do one too. However, mine will contain something that I won't tell anyone about before launch: It'll open up and unfurl unto a net with as large a profile as possible.
"the upcoming launch of an art project cum satellite" WTF?
You had parents who would lay out $100K just so you can do an attention-getting stunt?
So they are going to orbit a kardashian?
...will smile when Debris Section burns this piece of garbage in the atmosphere.
when I was in school, one day in English class we were handed a sheet of paper to write or draw anything we wanted to be sent up to orbit in a space time capsule. I thought it seemed like a bad idea to put things in orbit that don't need to be there, so I drew a picture of Earth with a bunch of garbage cans, garbage bags, and debris floating around it. I wish I could see that picture I drew. Google helped me determine the program was called SpaceArc and the messages were carried to orbit on tape in the DirecTV 2 satellite in 1994. But I wish the contents of the tape were available for viewing online.
Too bad this thread is off-topic. I wish I could mod you +5 funny.
Unfortunately, we don't have any weapons that would make it simply not exist, only ones that would break it into lots of small, harder to deal with pieces. Better to target the "artist".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This is a bargain as far as useless satellites go.
At only $100,400, it's about six orders of magnitude cheaper than the International Space Station.
Gee, if he bought a wifi module, and a video cam - he could transmit the satellite moving through space
at least it would have done something
It is certainly important to let and fund anyone who wants to call their self an "artist" to put junk into orbit. And far better to let this jerk, I mean artist, use the funds and the launch space to feel good about himself than to actually put micro-sats or other useful technology into space.
He didn't use your money, or any government funding, or force anyone to donate who didn't want to. Who are you to dictate how others choose to spend their resources?
You're a moron, broski.
This isn't that different from Ardusat, just different branding. Neither is actually useful, but one is branded as "art" while the other is branded as "educational".
I am really, really trying to find some kind of justification for this "art" project and I'm coming up with bupkis.
OK... It does nothing scientific. But it does nothing artistic either.
It's about as artistic as painting a rock and dumping in the Marianas Trench.
For something to be considered art, it has to be able to communicate to other humans a message beyond just its own physical existence.
This satellite is supposed to send messages transmitted to it by blinking its LEDs and "People will be able to see the blinking lights with the naked eye or through a telescope".
Visible from the Earth's surface. With naked eye. LEDs. A 10x10x10 cm cube. Hanging in low Earth orbit. 600-2000 km from the surface. Right.
I can't really be bothered to look it up, but something tells me that you can't really see a 10 cm cube, 600-2000 km away, with an amateur telescope.
Besides, shouldn't Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) "ground" this project?
Also, WTF is "Science is Fantasy" supposed to mean?
That science is unattainable and/or imaginary? Not real? With no real function or application?
Just dumping that "is" and it would make SOME sense. Or reversing the order of words in the sentence.
This... this is just half-thought through crap.
All I see here is rich, privileged parents, buying their rich, privileged, spoiled kid his 15 minutes of fame since he can't get there with his own effort and talent.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Link at the bottom of TFA: http://inhabitat.com/nasa-solar-powered-micro-satellite-will-clean-space-debris/
/. membership card!). Maybe it's just the author's tone and Song really is a cool guy, but in the article, he just came off...kinda pretentious, y'know? <shrug> Whatever. As others have noted, it will probably deorbit soon enough, and if he can drum up $100K to launch the thing, more power to him, I guess.
Also, I initially was thinking how it was kind of cool that he was able to build a satellite that he actually intends to launch, even if it's not especially useful. C'mon, how many of us started coding with "Hello World" programs? IMHO, this is kind of like that.
Then I RTFA'd (don't revoke my
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Just what we need, launching useless junk to make Earth orbit more dangerous.
I have an even better art project. Find some POS art project that is a total waste of time and money, steal it, and smash it to pieces as performance art before it gets off the ground. Then I'll post the footage on youtube and let viewers try to decide what message I was trying to convey in my performance.
Seriously, this kind of crap is why I have much disdain for avant-garde, modern, and 'contemporary' art. In general, most of these types of artists tend to be on the far left of the political spectrum (which is ok, but...), they denounce poverty, pollution, and destruction of our environment. But how much destruction is from paint chemicals leaking into ground water? How many starving or improvrished people could be rescued from the grants paid to these "inspiring" artists? How many HFH homes could have been built with the labor and talent of our academic and intellectual leaders of the art world? I don't want to deny them their fun, and I don't know the political views of this artist, but I think we have all seen what I have described.
As non-artists, non-academics, and non-elites we have been conditioned to believe that we just don't have the intellectual capacity to understand the significance and importance of their great work. All told, most of the "new" art movements from the past 150 years have been a byproduct of delusional, paranoid schizophrenia or other mental illnesses. When crazy people connect with other crazy people, finding someone with the same delusions reinforces their belief that they do not have a mental illness but some profound insight into the nature of the Universe. So we have today an oligarchy of mentally ill cultural elites to whom the rest of the masses aim to aspire to in their aesthetic endeavors, not much unlike the inbred aristocracy that was convinced that they were owed special status in life due to their pedigree. Fortunately a few revolutions (France, America) eventually forced the aristocrats to take a back seat to productive citizens who now set their own destiny, banishing royal life to the back pages of gossip tabloids, somewhere behind part-cow/part-alien boy and the ghost of Michael Jackson. It would be nice one day to see mainstream non-art academics, financiers and art endowments wake up to a revolution of their own to refer these jokers to a different "institution".
Great, just what we need, another piece of junk orbiting the planet and causing a hazard to other space missions.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I thought this was going to be a Raspberry Pi promotion. "And yes he was able to finish it all off with a purchase of a Raspberry Pi! for only 25$ since he didn't need the 35$ one! Raspberry Pi in space!!!!!!"
... one more giant leap in the increasingly insignificant field known as "The Arts". "The Arts" used to mean making something of beauty that inspired something uplifting in other people. Today it means a narcissitic exercise in avant-garde.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
But its perfectly fine when the militaries of the world clutter up our space with their junk, despite their promises they would never militarize space.
Hey, it's the first attempt at space art. Weird as it might be, as long as it won't be in permanent orbit, give the guy his little fantasy.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The Russians had this idea first!
The first thought that came to mind was, "North Korea is at it again?"
Surely Kim Jong Un has "virtuoso artiste" as part of his accomplishments.
Well, it actually isn't the first attempt at space art.
And it is probably not going to make things much worse as far as the space junk issue is concerned.
Anyway, I am not about to call to a jihad against him and his pretty unimaginative project, which is more of a publicity stunt than anything else.
But I do reserve my right to call the spade a spade - or in this case, junk and a lame attempt at fame.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Look, I'm all for letting artists do what they wanna do most of the time, but seriously. There is already several tons of garbage (read shit) from derelict equipment and satelites or other scraps. Enough so that it poses a hazard to both manned and unmanned missions if a piece of the debris should strike something. So It's bad enough sending up actually useful equipment, let alone some useless $400 dollar piece of junk(art, just mean it has no function at all). to top it off basically noone will ever see it unless they know exactly where and how to look. so this is an EPIC FAIL. especially considering the cost to launch this thing into orbit. I mean how much pollution and crap does this contribute, not that I really care. I'm more concerned with sending junk up into space that actually is junk when it's already getting quite crowded up there. It's just one extra danger to astronauts and space programs of all countries.