A PLANET OF PEOPLE
By Julijonas Urbonas (LT)
A Planet of People is an artificial cosmic body extra-terraformed entirely of human bodies. The exhibit sends humans to L2, one of the Lagrangian points in space where the gravity is stable, and allows the frozen bodies float freely until weak gravities make them assemble into a blob: in this way, a new ‘human’ planet is formed.
Playing with its variables, such as the quantity of individuals and the duration of time, the project speculates upon the aesthetic, ethical and scientific aspects of such a space structure. What spatial shapes would it be possible to engineer? How would a landscape look on such a planet? What biochemical processes would it undergo, and would it form its own ecosystem eventually? And what would be the ethical, cultural and political implications?
The outcomes of the artistic research are visualised through 3D simulations, drawings and performances for A Planet of People. The exhibit as part of LIFE AT THE EDGES features an interactive installation in which the body of a visitor is scanned and transposed into the 3D astrophysics simulation of A Planet of People.
BIO
Julijonas is an artist, designer, researcher, engineer, Vice-Rector for Art and associate professor at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and a PhD student in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, London.
For almost a decade, working between critical design, amusement park engineering, performative architecture, choreography, kinetic art and sci-fi, he has been developing various critical tools for negotiating gravity: from a killer rollercoaster to the artificial asteroid made up entirely of human bodies that is A Planet of People..
Through these projects, he coined the term of gravitational aesthetics, meaning an artistic approach exploiting the means of manipulating gravity to create experiences that push the body and imagination to its extremes.
His work has received many awards, including the Award of Distinction in Interactive Art, Prix Ars Electronica 2010. His projects can be found in private and museum collections such as the permanent collection of the Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe (ZKM).