Thill, Scott. “Jonathon Keats’ Space Agency Launches Arty Exotourism.” Wired. Condé Nast, 4 Oct. 2010. Web. 8 Sept. 2014.
http://www.wired.com/2010/10/jonathon-keats-exotourism/?viewall=true
Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has differentiated himself from NASA in one major way: instead of bringing humans into space, he’s bringing space to humans. In his Local Air & Space Administration (LASA) project, he grew succulents and potatoes out of foreign materials like asteroid pieces and lunar anorthosite. The project yielded plants and food that had been cultivated from space, in the home setting of earth.
His new approach to planetary exploration is both tongue-in-cheek amusing and genuinely fascinating. Keats’ work makes a solid point in taking this drastically different perspective. Why can’t we experiment on space more from the privacy of our own home? Shouldn’t we care about our own planet rather than racing to colonize the next one? Studying our own surroundings might just be a worthwhile endeavor after all.
