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T-Minus: Space-Cyber Briefing
T-Minus Overview- Art and the Overview Effect.
00:29:51
Welcome to the T-Minus Overview Radio Show featuring conversations with experts from the space industry.
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- [00:02]
Host
You're listening to the N2K space network. Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, and we here at N2K are taking a break from our daily headlines to spend some time to celebrate the incredible life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Please enjoy a T minus overview radio program in lieu of our daily intelligence briefing.
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Dave
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Alice Carruth
I'm Alice Carruth, producer of the T Minus Space Daily Podcast, and you're listening to T Minus Overview.
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Unknown
T Minus Money.
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Alice Carruth
In this program, we'll feature some of the conversations from our daily podcast with many of the people who are forging the path in the new space era. From industry leaders, technology experts and pioneers to educators, policymakers, research organizations and more.
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Benediktas Gillis
Foreign.
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Alice Carruth
Has long been inspired by space. We see it in pictures and photography. We hear it in music and immerse ourselves in it through movies and TV shows. What is it about space that inspires artists? In this episode, we'll be speaking to artists that have been using space in their work to inspire others to feel more connected to the universe. Our first guest founded the global art installations called Portals. These structures are placed around the world to connect people and cultures. Now Portals want to connect people with earth and space. I spoke to Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gillis about his art installations and how he plans to use space to connect people to our home planet.
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Benediktas Gillis
My name is Benedictus Gilles and I am the founder of Portals Organization. I started my career as an entrepreneur in 2008, long time ago and I was Constantly looking for revealing my true purpose in this life. I was constantly feeling empty during my career. And somehow I felt that there must be some greater cause that I should dedicate my life to. And this search led me to a very scary, yet profound experience in 2016, where after realizing that I know nothing about the universe, I felt a deep connection with all living beings on planet Earth. It was life changing. And after it became very difficult for me to live in our world and to see the constant separation, the hatreds, I felt a deep need to create something as an opposition to that force. And I wanted to do it not in a rational way that would speak to the human mind, but I wanted to create something that would speak to the human heart. And this is how slowly I came up with the concept of portals, which are technology, arts, sculptures. They are all identical, built in different countries around the world, and they provide video, live stream as a pure window between cultures and invite us humans of planet Earth to meet face to face, heart to heart, above all borders, all prejudices, all descriptions, and to just realize our interconnectedness and to realize that we are all sharing this tiny spaceship called Earth. And the only way to continue this journey is together.
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Maria Lannis
I love that it kind of builds onto the whole idea of the overview effect, but in a very different way, in a very grounding way of us being able to connect. And what has been the kind of reaction to people when they've gone to the port portals? What is it that they're coming away from the experience and saying, this is what I found from it?
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Benediktas Gillis
Yes. It's very interesting for me to witness the portals and reactions. And I think the reason why they travel so far, especially in our collective consciousness, is because multiple people have multiple opinions. Some people think that it's the worst idea ever. Some people think that it's the best idea ever. And some people see forests, some people see trees. Trees. And it seems that it's also a great mirror of our humanity in 2024, because we see a lot of light, a lot of joy, a lot of happiness. We also see some attention seeking, trying to gain clicks, trying to gain followers and to shape the narrative. So it's like a collective story that we are all telling. And I think that constantly amazes me, the creativity and the perception of people. And I think it's a healthy way also to run this project is not to just drown in all the waves, but also to be just sitting somewhere on the cave and just witnessing all the waves come and go.
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Maria Lannis
Absolutely. And that really brings us to why we've invited you on the show today, and that's your new partnership with Senior. Now, I just read this great quote from Charles Black, the founder and CEO of sen. He said SEN and portals share a common theme, that we are connecting people. Portals connect people in different places on Earth, and SEN connects people with space. And he thinks that together, you guys can come up with something truly unique. So what is it you're doing? You're connecting people here on the Earth, but now all of a sudden, you're working with space. How does that work?
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Benediktas Gillis
Yes, I think portals are devices to change perception. And let's imagine if, like, I spent 20 years living in my apartment and I had never stepped aside to just see the building, my perception of the building would be so, so limited. And now I feel that the biggest issue with our humanity is that our worldview ends with our national borders, and we are faced with constant global challenges. But still we are in this ethnocentrism phase of our evolution, and we need a global story. We need a global story as humans of planet Earth. And SEN is really helping us to just create this opportunity to see the planet as one. Because now we are still in this knowledge phase where we know. I can tell you everything about my apartment building. I can tell you all the facts, but the perception is missing. So now we are living in this era of knowledge, but we are far away from living in the era of perception, of realization, what it truly means to live in this planet and to be a part of this planet. So I'm very excited about this partnership, and I really hope that it will be a step forward for portals and for SEN as well, without giving too.
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Maria Lannis
Much away, because I know we want to get people to go to the portals, to really experience it themselves. What is it that people are seeing when they get to these portals, and where are they in the world where they can connect with the universe through those send cameras?
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Benediktas Gillis
Yes. So the first portal is in Vilnius, Lithuania. The second portal is in Lublin, Poland. The third portal is being transferred now to a more permanent location from city of New York. So it will be announced in a couple of weeks from now. And portal number four is in Dublin and Ireland. Portal number five is being built for Brazil. And portal number six is also being built for the location that also be revealed hopefully this month. So everyone who would stand close to the portal for three minutes, they would see another country. They would. Let's say we are standing close to the portal number one in Vilnius for three minutes, we would see Lublin, Poland, after we would be transitioned to Dublin, Ireland, and after we would see SEN footage, the SEN livestream for three minutes and the trip around the world would continue in that fashion.
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Maria Lannis
That's amazing because obviously the camera that the SEN has is attached to the International Space Station, so it's actually looking down on the Earth from space, which is quite amazing. So you must see a completely different perspective every time that that comes round. What has people reacted to that about? Because, you know, because you see these images of the universe, but really we rarely look down on the Earth. And I know that that's what a lot of the astronauts come away from, the iss coming back with that real connection to the planet. So is that what you're hoping to do with these portals?
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Benediktas Gillis
Yes, we hope to bring the overview facts back home from space to home. And we hope to make this experience available for all humans who are dreaming of going to space or all the humans that are asking questions that want to have a different experience of our home. And that is what we are hoping to experience with portals.
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Maria Lannis
So what's the long term plan now? You've got these incredible pieces and you say you've now got six of them around the world. Is the idea to have as many as possible? Are they going to be more limited to larger cities? You know, what is it you're hoping to do with portals in the future?
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Benediktas Gillis
Portals are built for all the citizens of planet Earth. And we do not see cities being more important. Of course, we like portals to exist in locations that would be accessible to people. And so far we have large cities, but also we are working with tiny cities. And in the future we will have hundreds of portals. But the ultimate experience of portals is of course, standing close to one of them. But mostly 99% of people see them online. They see them as this interesting sculpture. And somehow we managed to reach more than 1 billion people already. And portals represent a message. They represent a question of what does it really mean? And they provide. They plant seeds that might change our thinking, that might change our perception and writing that story, having this collective story is our goal. And building portals is a tool to achieve this goal by having this adventure of building portals, which is a very difficult, difficult endeavor. Multiple steps forward and sometimes even more steps back. So that's the goal, is to write a story together with our community of building this first of its kind network of sculptures, also known as Bridge to a United Planet together.
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Maria Lannis
I love that. What a great idea of connecting people. So as we are connecting people, and you're obviously using the Cameras that are looking back down to Earth. Is there any idea of how you would try and perhaps connect people to those that are off the Earth? Because we constantly have people on the International Space Station. Kind of wonderful to see what's going on in there and have that insight through something like the portals.
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Benediktas Gillis
That's a great question. And that's like a very popular topic among our team members. And I think that it would be important for people to fully feel connected to Earth, that they would also see people who are there at the moment and to just wave and connect. So I think it's a development for the future years, but I'm sure that it will happen. The question is when?
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Alice Carruth
Our second guest is artist Maria Lannis. Maria works with NASA astronaut Nicole Stott on the Space for Art foundation that engages with students from around the globe to send postcards to space and design colorful spacesuits. Maria started by telling us how she founded Project Postcard.
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Unknown
I had been working on a series of paintings called Infusions. And through these paintings, I got invited to work as an artist in residence in Kazdap, Croatia. And the paintings are about a personal experience that my father in law, he had melanoma. And I was taking him to the chemo treatments. And during this treatment, I imagined how his blood would mix with the chemotherapy. And I painted what I imagined. So I took my paintings to Croatia. And as my surprise when I arrived and I set up the whole gallery with my paintings, the opening night, nobody showed up. And, you know, as artists, I guess we are prepared for that. People come and, you know, that's okay. We can take critiques like that. So then, you know, one of my friends from Bosnia, she was there. She's the one that introduced me to this program. And the day after that, you know, she left. And she left me by myself in Croatia. And I didn't speak the language. And I was a little bit overwhelmed by what had happened the night before. So I just said, you know, I'm just gonna have coffee. And I went to a coffee shop. And then the photographer that was at the exhibit came to my table, and he said hi. And as we started to talk, he started questioning me about, you know, why I was there, who paid me. And I understood then that there was a little bit of a problem for me being there. And then I understood why nobody had to the exhibit. The next day, the mayor of the city, he called me and he said, okay, as part of this program, your job is to give a class to the kids in the local kindergarten. The English speaking class from the mayor's office to the school. I had to think of a plan because I am not a teacher. I had never taught little kids. And I was thinking, what can I make that it's engaging to them. So my idea from my 5 minute walk from the mayor's office to the little school was, okay, I'm gonna make a theme called the Cats of Cast up. And the kids are gonna tell me the story of the city through the touristic places that they're gonna draw. And the cats are gonna tell the story of that place. So I go into the classroom and I introduce this project to the kids and the teacher. And then I had to introduce myself where I came from. So at that moment I saw myself as the 11 year old self that I was when I came to this country, when I came to live in Maryland. And I had to make the same introduction to strangers, to fifth graders. So I began with that same speech as I had when I was little. But the difference was that I had a book about Ecuador in paintings through this artist, Guayaz Amin. And I showed the kids the city, my city, through art. And they got it. They understood the project, they had lots of questions, and the teacher was convinced that this was a good idea. So the next day when we started working on the project, she surprised me with all the information about Ecuador and the Ecuadorian flag. And we started to work. And that was just an incredible moment for me because I noticed their engagement, I noticed their interest. And even the teachers were surprised about how the kids were behaving. So after the second day, third day, the teacher said, let's go to the gallery to see your work. And I went to the gallery with the kids. And as we walked in, you know, my paintings are colorful, so the mood, as soon as they walked in and saw the paintings, they saw dragons and incredible things, right? Color and things like that. So the teacher asked me, what is this about? And I said, oh, this is about my experience with my father in law. I just told them the truth, what it was about. And the moment I finished, there was a very uncomfortable silence in the whole gallery. And the teacher was not happy with me because she told me, why didn't you tell me that, you know, this was the subject? And all of a sudden the little kids start raising their hands and they start telling their own personal stories about their parents, their grandparents, health, their own health. And at that moment they understood what art was about and how they were supposed to tell me their stories through their artwork. So when we came Back to the classroom. They had a very clear idea of what they were gonna tell me and what they were supposed to do. So when we finished the project, I said, I need to exhibit this artwork, the kids artwork in the gallery with me. So we got it cleared through the mayor's office. They accepted. I hung the work. And the closing night, to everybody's surprise, the gallery was packed. Everybody showed up. The newspapers, the photographers. And then I thought how important it was for them to learn about other cultures and for other cultures to learn about this beautiful city called Cast Up. And I came back to Washington and I got with a local school in Ashburn, Virginia, and we started the first exchange. So the kids did the first exchange. We did a Skype call. This is 10 years ago, right before, you know, nobody was using this in the classroom. And then when the kids saw me via Skype, you know, they were so happy, they couldn't believe they were looking at me. And there was a little girl in this classroom in Kastab who was adopted from an African country. So she was the only black girl. And when she sees in the classroom in Virginia, there was another little girl that looked just like her. So at that moment, she reacted and she started touching the screen and she said, you look like me. And she started doing, you know, cartwheels. You know, she couldn't believe that there was somebody, like, looking like her on the other side of the world. So at that moment, it was clear to me that I had to continue with this kind of exchanges because there was a difference. So, you know, with 25 students, you know, it grew to 3,000.
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Maria Lannis
How on earth did you and Nicole come together? How did your paths cross?
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Unknown
Our paths crossed in the strangest and nicest way. Through art. It happened through art. Because before Nicole, I had my own initiative called Project Postcard. And I was working with different schools from around the world. And we had an exhibit in Dallas airport called One World. And it was, you know, five schools from Ecuador, Virginia, Uganda, Iran. And it was a display, you know, a 30 foot long display with little windows. And each window had a postcard. So Nicole, that day was coming back from Houston from working on her own project. And she saw it and she tagged me. And that moment when I saw this, you know, tag on my Instagram account, I was completely. I was like, what is this Astro Nicole thing? You know, and as soon as I click on the picture, I see the astronaut, and I'm like, oh, my God, an astronaut likes my work. And my first thought was first of shock, you know, that somebody so big and important to me would be liking my work. And then the second idea was, this is an opportunity for all the kids that I work with to learn about space. And, you know, since I'm. I already at the airport, the next thing is to do space. So I said in a message, I thanked Nicole for tagging me, and I asked her, is it possible that my kids, the kids that I work with exchanging artwork, can they send postcards to space to the astronauts? And she replied, yes. And from that moment, we started working.
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Maria Lannis
And now you're taking these postcards to space. How on earth does that work? Tell me about the Postcards to Space program.
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Unknown
First, we started our own Postcards to space in 2018, and then blue Origin, they started their own project, and we engaged with them, and they invited us to participate with Club for the Future. And we have been working with them, sending postcards to space. They give us the template, and it's an amazing program because now we can broaden it up. We give the postcards to the kids, they make their drawings, and we send them to Club for the Future. And whenever the next flight is, they send them up to space, and then the postcards are stamped and they are sent back to the kids. So now they have something personal. It's meaningful to them, you know, that they got so far with, you know, with such a. With their own personal touch. So it's really nice.
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Maria Lannis
I love that. And it extends it out beyond just being your community and your culture, which I love. But then to be able to have a piece of space to hold onto, to have as your own what an exceptional thing for these students around the world it is.
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Unknown
You know, before, you know, I used to think it looks beyond the horizon, but now it really. We have gone completely beyond their horizons. And their outlook on the future is so different, and it's an added value to their education and experiences.
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Maria Lannis
Absolutely. And you and Nicole collaborate on Space for Art Foundation. Can you tell me a little bit about that foundation?
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Unknown
Well, after working on the Spacesuit art project, we decided to create a foundation. So we called it the Space for Art. And we create a space themed art project for kids in hospitals, in schools, in refugee camps, and we promote healing through art. And hopefully when we get to work with these kids in the hospitals again, it's another transforming idea because we're, you know, from that difficult moment in their lives they're going through, we give them a time where hopefully they can forget about that and they can again look beyond.
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Maria Lannis
Yeah, I love that. And you Guys have done a series of spacesuits with those students Arts. Can you tell us a bit about the spacesuits that you guys make?
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Unknown
Well, each spacesuit is different. And Nicole started, you know, the Spacesuits with MD Anderson and our also co founder Ian Zion. And it started small with that same idea, kids artwork, put them in a spacesuit, and luckily they were able to send them to space. So it's the same simple idea to gather the artwork from different hospitals and just have ILC Dover create the spacesuits, which even gives it greater meaning because what they do is incredible. And when the kids learn that and when they see the final product is mind blowing. You know, it's to participate in something like that, to give them a moment like that, to give them a memory like that, to make them part of history like that. It's priceless. And with our Beyond Spacesuit, we did it through during COVID time, so we couldn't go into hospitals and work with the kids. So we made in a way virtual. You know, the kids just had to send us the pictures of the drawings. We were able to capture a drawing from every country on the planet. So everybody's represented there. And we went a step beyond the spacesuit and we made a virtual spacesuit so everybody can go to our website and look at the spacesuit, click on it where they will see the spacesuit, and they can click on each picture and see where the picture came from, which country, which organization. It's a great way to learn about geography, but also for the kids who participated to see wherever they are in the world, their artwork.
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Alice Carruth
Thank you to our guests, artists Benedict Tusbulus and Maria Lannis. If you're interested in hearing more about the space industry, join us every day for T minus Space Daily, available on all major podcast platforms. Find out more@space space.n2k.com we'd love to know what you think of this show. You can email us@space2k.com your feedback ensures we deliver the information that keeps you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Karf. Some Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I'm Alice Carruth. Thanks for listening.
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Unknown
T minus.
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Dave
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