The sky's the limit: when science and art meet in a talk organized by Artpool and MAAT

Artists have always been curious about the vastness of the universe throughout art history. As quoted in one of his artist’s statements, Michael Beson once said "Comos is a ready masterpiece". The American visual artist, writer and filmmaker has staged a series of large-scale shows internationally of digitally reconstructed planetary landscape photography.

Spanish artist Solimán López has also been looking up to the sky to create multimedia installations with beacons spread out in different parts of the world that are equipped with cameras. These capture incessant real-time images of the celestial vault and turn them into a digital aesthetic, For both Lopez and Beson, merging science and technology to create innovative art, is at the centre of their practice. To them, the sky's the limit.

As a result of an exciting new partnership between Artpool and MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, López just installed one of his Celeste beacons at the top of the Lisbon museum. For the occasion, we organized a talk between both artists on May 20th titled "The Sky's the Limit: When art and science enter the crypto space". Mediated by the curator and entrepreneur behind Artpool, Pauline Foessel, the discussion explored and approximated the two dimensions of space: the celestial vault, and the crypto space; the Universe and the Metaverse.

The discussion unfolded topics such as transforming data and analytical information into art,  the environment and sustainability, and the sky as a symbol of connection and limitlessness. NFTs was also at the center of the talk: with Artpool, Solimán López is now transforming his images of the skies into NFTs and making it possible for people to own a digital piece of the sky. As Michael Benson is also interested in working with NFTs, Pauline Foessel instigated  exchange of views around ownership of digital assets, revenue for creators and community in Web3.

More is yet to come: Celeste exhibition is to happen at MAAT in October. Thanks to our amazing partner, incredible images of Lisbon skies will be taken until then!

Click here to read the text about the project with an interview with artist Solimán López