Tonight: Hojun Song and the convergence between art and... satellites?

Yeah, it sounded like an unlikely combination to me too - but it turns out that the first private individuals to ever launch and operate a satellite may in fact be an artist. And he'll be talking about his engineering project/art installation tonight at the offices of W+K in Shanghai.

Hojun Song is the front man of OSSI, the Open Source Satellite Initiative, which seeks to bring satellite making and launching into the DIY world. As he told Michele Travierso in a recent issue of Monocle:

I came up with an idea of combining a space program and street art... If we can wear and use space in our daily lives, this will change the thought that only a few white-gowned scientists can do space science... [it will] bring coolness back into space culture."

If all goes well, private space company NovaNano will shoot Song's satellite (projected cost: $100,000, all paid for by sales of artist-designed fundraising t-shirts) into orbit towards the end of the year. The satellite will "display Morse-coded messages visible from earth" and is "so small it fits in a small daypack and is controllable from a website."

So what will the talk be on? According to the events description: The crossover between media arts, space grade technology, the open source movement and the ever changing role of the artist in a modern society. Sounds rad!

Where: W+K Shanghai, 3/F, No. 1035 Changle Lu near Wulumuqi Lu
When: April 1, 7PM