As part of the exhibition ‘Cosmos Archaeology’ at the Shanghai Astronomy Museum, Nick Ryan Studio exhibited three works from ‘Project Adrift’, a collaborative project with artist Cath Le Couteur.

Melding art and science, the exhibition reveals the depths of the Universe through physical, perceptual, and sensory interaction. Harnessing technologies of immersive and interactive visualization and the visual arts, the exhibition transforms the most complex astrophysical data into sounds and images that everyone can experience and understand.

The first of the exhibited works (pictured above) was ‘Earthly Debris Cabinet’, an art installation by Nick Ryan and a series of volunteers. Each of the seventeen terrestrial objects featured was chosen by a volunteer who imagined that they resembled space debris. As part of the installation, exhibition attendees were encouraged to imagine and draw their own space junk; this exercise has created an archive of 6,000 brilliant, extraterrestrial drawings.

The second is the short documentary ‘Adrift’ (2017) a collaboration with Cath Le Couteur that explores the troubling, beautiful, dangerous and fascinating world of space junk.

And the third, ‘SuitSat’ (2018) by Cath Le Couteur, is a short digital visualisation of a Russian astronaut’s suit that was pushed out of the International Space Station in 2006. Fitted with a radio transmitter, it was meant to communicate with Earth as a satellite. But it failed, after a few days and burnt up in Earth’s atmosphere as a piece of space junk.