the rocket project

Hello there,

Sunday the 18-04-2004 there is a so-called "Cultural Sunday" in the city of Utrecht, located in The Netherlands. On this special day the Utrecht University

formatting link

will open her doors for the public, and in their buildings all kind of cultural happenings take place. I (3d year fine arts student in Utrecht at the HKU

formatting link

together with a small group of fellow students, am asked to build a site-specific installation for this occasion. What follows is my plan: I am going to build a rocket on Sunday the 18th of April. One that actually flies.

In order to do so, I will ask people from all over the world to help me using the internet. I will contact them beforehand trough "Usenet", all kinds of different forums on the internet, and people I already know trough email. The people I will approach are scientists or artists, and I am going to ask them to assist me during the given Sunday. To make those people able to help me I will install a few web cams on the location where I'm building, and on

formatting link

you will be able to see the recordings of the web cams, so you can see what's going on, and on the message board people can give me directions. That given Sunday I will build the rocket in the observatory of Utrecht following the instructions given to me trough the website.

The result of this will be shot into space ^^ on a yet to decide date.

All the data I collect during this Sunday will be available on the internet, and the launch will be broadcasted live. You don't need to login to the message board, nor need to supply email address or so. The board is already online, so you can check it out, and maybe even give me a "shopping list" for the materials I need:

formatting link

If you have any questions, please mail me: joris0 -AT- bkv.hku.nl (replace -AT- by @)

Thank you & greets Joris.

There has been a concept change due to input I got).

formatting link

Project target: To come up with a concept for a rocket. Everybody in the world can contribute to this through this website. The concept starts from scratch, so we can think about (for example) how it should work (how high it should get, and with what motor etc.), how it should look (in an aerodynamical point of view, but also just visual), what it's purpose is (should it bring something to space, should it destroy something), and probably there are much more issues we could think about.

How it works: You can leave messages on this website, and I will ad an option to upload pictures. The way I see it we discuss about the things I mentioned above, till we get a good concept, on wich we all agree that it should be build. That concept is the one I will build (off course we could also do that with more people, but that could get complicated when people are from the US for example),and it will be launched (with permission etc. from ground control), broadcasted trough streaming video on this website.

Purpose: I believe that you can reach more with a group of people than alone. The opensource community was a source of inspiration for this project. The idea for a rocket I had because I was shooting a science-fiction movie (that didn't worked out) and I was preparing some kind of location based project in a space that reminded me of the rocket launch vulcano from a James Bond movie. This project was originally the idea for the project on that location, for the original concept: read this. I want to open doors wich other people left unopened, do what other people didn't (because it seemed stupid, unethical, they just didn't tought about it), see what hapens.

Joris (admin -AT- jorislindhout.tk)