Israeli Artist to Create First Sculpture in Outer Space

An Israeli artist plans to create a “laughing” piece that will be beamed up to outer space this year, becoming the first-ever sculpture in space.

Eyal Gever is a concept artist working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on a project called #Laugh, which will take a digital representation of human laughter and send it space, where it will be formed into a “sculpture” by the Made in Space company on a 3D printer designed to work in zero-gravity conditions, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The #Laugh project is intended to help create an environment where astronauts can work easier in space, for instance, giving them the ability to upload images and print them in 3D.

“One of the areas that we are excited a lot about is art and how we can design new types of art that maybe we can’t even bring back to Earth, because we’re building a sculpture that wouldn’t even survive in gravity,” said Made in Space’s chief technology officer, Jason Dunn, in a video promoting #Laugh.

Gever spoke Wednesday at Tel Aviv’s International Mediterranean Tourism Market conference about wanting to create a sculpture of something that does not exist in space.

“I realized, you know, maybe I shouldn’t even think about using a person or a certain language that has a political connotation or culture or time or race, and then a friend of mine said, ‘Why don’t you do a human laughter?’” he said.

As part of the NASA project, people will be able to record and submit their laughter online, and then vote on which digital representation of laughter should be used in the sculpture.