How to See the Moon in Color
A Project for the Moon Gallery at the International Space Station
Who owns the Moon? How to See the Moon in Color is a painting kit consisting of a miniature slingshot with tiny paintballs which conceptually links beautiful false color images of mineral wealth on the Moon to this urgent social question. The essential human activity of mark-making, including leaving our traces on the Moon's surface, collides with the David and Goliath problem of the individual or collective facing off against corporate or state enterprises that will soon compete for the Moon's mineral resources. Humanity, look up!
1 inch cube model
Hand-carved maple slingshot positioned within a diorama dramatizing a crude method of mark-making on the Moon, backgrounded by a false-color rendering mapping the Moon’s various mineral resources.
1 centimeter cube model
Another hand-carved slingshot is made to fit the smaller profile of the Moon Gallery going to the International Space Station. The lightweight wooden object, an ancient technology referencing human capacity for ingenuity but also violence, was meant to be set among utopic and technophiliac objects in the Gallery (but was ultimately not sent to space as it was “different than expected”).
Miniature pink paintballs were included in the package. (The Moon mirror was not.) Make whatever you want of the pink. It seemed to be an obvious color choice besides also referencing the most valuable mineral deposits.
Poster
As corporate and state enterprises compete for domination of mineral markets — for example, of rare-earth metals used to make electronic devices and solar panels that will power our carbon-neutral future, and many types of metals (titanium, iron, aluminum) that could be used in building and repairing aerospace-craft — the Moon could potentially become a battleground for control of natural lunar resources, which the U.S. Geological Survey compiled into a map, upon which this poster is based. Questions about unilateral moves by the United States on lunar and asteroid mining could further a new interstellar cold war and arms race.
This piece encourages viewers to take a new view of the Moon, not just as a place upon which humanity has left its indelible mark, but also to stimulate looking and counter-looking from both the perspective of Earth toward the Moon and from the Moon toward the Earth. Considering both of these viewpoints, as Robert Heinlein masterfully did in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (excerpt included in poster), brings into stark focus the role the Moon could play in exaggerating political and social power asymmetries on Earth and — importantly — also how the raw willpower of the collective can interrupt the inequity cycle.
In history and mythology, the slingshot has emphasized the power of the lone individual (David, for example) to fight against a Goliath in the name of the people. In Heinlein’s narrative, catapults are designed by rogue collectivist miners who realize they have enormous social and political leverage just by throwing Moon-rocks that could explode on Earth's surface with nuclear-tons force. How to See the Moon in Color triangulates between the metaphor of the slingshot, current events and Space Law, and Robert Heinlein's speculative fiction, suggesting that humanity pay attention to the Moon as a corollary for current political struggles and issues of economic equality and also encouraging people to band together; for example, by extending the International Space Treaty to all moons, planets and asteroids.