Patrick Earl Hammie, visual artist and Associate Professor & Chair of Studio Arts at the University of Illinois, has art that will be taken to the moon as part of the Lunar Codex program. Lunar Codex is an “an archive of contemporary art, poetry and other cultural artifacts of life on Earth.” It is curated by Samuel Peralta — a physicist and art collector — and is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services.
The works of more than 30,000 artists will be digitized and stored on memory cards or NanoFiche, divided into four capsules, and then sent to the moon to remain there as an intergalactic artistic time capsule of sorts. The digitized artwork is made up of “images, objects, magazines, books, podcasts, movies and music from 157 countries.” Previous space missions, including Apollo 12 in 1969 have also left artwork on the moon.
Hammie’s work is featured in publications that will be digitized and then sent on one of the upcoming missions.
You can read more about the CLPS deliveries on NASA’s website, or read additional updates on Peralta’s Facebook.