Space art and knowledge

Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

--
_ARTEW_ Space art
http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/...gallery_1.html

On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:28:10 +0100, Dawid Michalczyk
wrote:

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

Well, LOTR is one of my favorite books, but I don't mistake it for
reality g.

If space art represents itself as scientifically accurate, and it isn't,
that's not a good thing. If it is clearly fantasy, there's nothing wrong
with that. Personally, I do find it kind of jarring to see space art
that has elements that are _obviously_ unreal, however. Your images
aren't in that category (except for showing galaxies and nebulas as
colorful, but that's an exaggeration I don't find unreasonable-
grayscale skies would get kind of boring after a while).
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Feb 1, 5:28*pm, Dawid Michalczyk wrote:
Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

--
_ARTEW_ Space arthttp://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/space/space_gallery_1.html

William Blake got it right,empiricists draw you down to the page hence
the blank celestial background -

http://nibiryukov.narod.ru/nb_pinaco...aac_newton.jpg

The responses here are mostly personal attacks,financial chestbeating
mixed with a bit of magnification and they think this is astronomy !.

The same feeling for astronomical methods and insights are present in
all wothwhile and creative endeavors of humanity such as in art and
music but it rare now to find people now who can bypass the novelistic
junk placed before the wider population under the name of 'astronomy'.

"Dawid Michalczyk" wrote in message
k...
Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are your
thoughts? Thanks.

--
_ARTEW_ Space art
http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/...gallery_1.html

My honest thought:
You don't give a ****, you just want to promote your own crap.
Well, you did ask...

Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:28:10 +0100, Dawid Michalczyk
wrote:

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

Well, LOTR is one of my favorite books, but I don't mistake it for
reality g.

If space art represents itself as scientifically accurate, and it isn't,
that's not a good thing. If it is clearly fantasy, there's nothing wrong
with that. Personally, I do find it kind of jarring to see space art
that has elements that are _obviously_ unreal, however. Your images
aren't in that category (except for showing galaxies and nebulas as
colorful, but that's an exaggeration I don't find unreasonable-
grayscale skies would get kind of boring after a while).

Indeed, NASA does the same thing with Hubble images - most of them are
false-color, with contrast exaggerated.

Chris L Peterson wrote:
If space art represents itself as scientifically accurate, and it isn't,
that's not a good thing. If it is clearly fantasy, there's nothing wrong
with that. Personally, I do find it kind of jarring to see space art
that has elements that are _obviously_ unreal, however. Your images
aren't in that category (except for showing galaxies and nebulas as
colorful, but that's an exaggeration I don't find unreasonable-
grayscale skies would get kind of boring after a while).


I thought the images looked very nice, especially this one:
http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/...-200801-TH.jpg
(where would space art be without Saturn?)
Nicest part though was a complete lack of any dolphins or whales in the
images, a thing that got way too popular a few years back:
http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s...dolphins-2.jpg
http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t...asy/Whales.jpg

Pat

On Feb 1, 10:28*am, Dawid Michalczyk wrote:

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are
your thoughts? Thanks.

Obviously, it is _preferable_ if space art is scientifically accurate.
Thus, the space art of Chesley Bonestell, for example, is well loved
because, in addition to its beauty, he was meticulous in researching
the scientific knowledge available at his time. (Some of that
knowledge, though, was imperfect as we now know.)

There are many impressive types of space art that are not strongly
dependent on scientific fact; as long as you point the lit side of any
moons towards the nearest sun, and so on, there isn't that much to get
wrong in many cases. And if you want to be the next Boris Vallejo
instead of the next Chesley Bonestell, well, that too is a path to
fame and fortune.

John Savard

On Feb 2, 4:36*am, "Painius" wrote:
"Dawid Michalczyk" wrote in message

k...

Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

I'm curious about this because my own space work is based mostly on
imagination rather than scientific knowledge of outer space. What are your
thoughts? Thanks.

--
_ARTEW_ Space art
http://www.art.eonworks.com/gallery/...gallery_1.html

Interesting name, "Dawid"! *It's so much like "David" that
at first i thought it might be a mistake, a "typo" error.

Anyway, a very important part of writing fiction, or in your
case, of illustrating space, is that you have a responsibility
to your readers/patrons to provide a sound basis of truth
to them. *This is part of what makes any fictional work very
difficult to construct. *It is in fact harder in this respect to
write about or illustrate space in fiction than it is to do it in
a more "documentary" style. *Truth is stranger than fiction,
and when you're writing about or illustrating "facts", that's
usually a lot easier than having to stick to "what is known"
or "what can possibly be" when writing/illustrating fiction.

You should have been advising our NASA and Apollo wizards.


So yes, there is a "boundary" that a writer or artist should
not "step over". However, people *love* color and contrast
in art, as even the Hubble scientists recognize. *So if one
provides the interesting, even fascinating, "colors" to one's
art, whether it be painting or writing, AND one does not
overstep the "boundary", then one can say that his or her
conscience is clear.

Your mainstream uses eye-candy hype all the time. Spitzer is
primarily of the IR spectrum and thus pretty much offers nothing but
artificial colorization and eye-candy. Most of Hubble is also eye-
candy hyped because of those color/hue saturations having been so
exaggerated, and their equipment upgrades will soon be offering even
more so extreme eye-candy.

http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/~rebu...auwOct.ppt.pdf


Having said that, one must also note that astronomy and
cosmology are still hampered by limitations that restrict
our total knowledge of "physical reality", so the boundary
isn't always clear and precise. *There is still much room
for "poetic" and "artistic" license!

The continual need-to-know and otherwise excluding of evidence policy
tends to cloud or cloak most everything that public funded, as well as
does the topic/author stalking and systematic bashing that you clearly
approve of.

~ BG

Dawid Michalczyk wrote:

Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

Depends on how it is portrayed within context and on the intent of the
artist. Some of the more imaginitive stuff is very thought provoking,
but has little place in a science textbook. Science textbooks,
however, aren't the only works of value.
--
Dave

On Feb 2, 1:32*pm, Dave Typinski wrote:
Dawid Michalczyk wrote:

Hi,

Something I was wondering about lately is how space art is perceived by
those who are knowledgeable about astronomy and space in general. How do
you perceive space art that does not accurately represent the current
astronomical knowledge? Good, bad?

Depends on how it is portrayed within context and on the intent of the
artist. *Some of the more imaginitive stuff is very thought provoking,
but has little place in a science textbook. *Science textbooks,
however, aren't the only works of value.
--
Dave

Our science textbooks are absolutely chuck full of mainstream status
quo infomercials, hype and butt loads of eye-candy as is. What parts
would you like to see changed, such as for their becoming more
informative and truthworthy?

~ BG