SPACE: A DANGEROUS PLACE

Space: A Dangerous Place is an accompanying piece to COLLISION II, a site-specific orbital debris constellation sculpture in low-Earth orbit. Thousands of launches since Sputnik in 1957 have rendered the regions of space near Earth a dangerous place. Orbital debris from these launches—dramatically increased by explosions and collisions in space—poses a deadly hazard in our near-Earth environment to both humans and spacecraft. The number of orbital debris objects large enough to be tracked by the U.S. Space Command now stands at over ten thousand.  In reality there are tens of millions of orbital debris objects that are too small to be detected by radar and yet represent a very serious danger.  Inspired by this deadly threat, American artist Richard Clar was drawn to the environmental space problem of orbital debris.  Space: A Dangerous Place, was created utilizing dramatic images relating to orbital debris, including hyper-velocity impacts and materials struck by orbital debris while in space.  The music and sound of French composer Marc Battier—heard on Space: A Dangerous Place—utilizes among other things, actual tracks from various NASA mission controllers announcing successful launches and docking maneuvers in space contrary to what is portrayed visually.  The message here is that not everything goes according to plan.