Radical VR installation flies you to the moon



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The moon has been receiving a lot of attention lately. From Elon Musk 's SpaceX trip around the moon – which has been signed for NASA' s renewed plans for moon exploration, it seems we 're in a new lunar space race.

The latest exhibition at Denmark's Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, "The Moon: From Inner Worlds to Outer Space," looks at how artists have been looking upward to Earth's satellite – not only from a scientific point of view, but also to the moon as a cultural symbol imbued with different meanings.

"I was the first artist in residence at NASA," said artist-musician Laurie Anderson, whose work, co-created with fellow mixed media artist Hsin-Chien Huang, is one of the highlights of the exhibition. "For three years, I'm a fly on the wall at Mission Control in Houston, Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, the Hubble in Maryland."

Anderson has never taken a step back from drawing on science for advancements to use in her work, which often has a futuristic tone. Her 1981 self-directed video for the song "O Superman," which brings her progressive aesthetic into pop culture, is no exception and cleverly shows Anderson's fascination with technology.

For this new exhibition, Anderson – and Huang worked on a VR installation that will take visitors through an otherworldly experience.

"Everybody wants to come to the world of art, it's just that they're unique," said Anderson.

With the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing next year, the exhibition celebrates the fascination with lunar expeditions, but it also includes artworks that focus on the strong symbolic hold the moon has over people.

"We were commissioned to make a work out of the moon because of the big birthdays: first step, first man, so a lot of people are looking at the moon these days," said Anderson.

The moon has long been featured in art, from cave artists to dating back 15,000 years ago who drew constellations and lunar calendars to 19th-century painters who depicted night scenes bathed in romantic moonlight.

But the night sky is not only synonymous with beauty. So Anderson and Huang also created a "hideous" version of the moon, in which people had dumped all the radioactive material from Earth.

"We did different phases of the moon, different aspects," said Anderson.

Watch the video for Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Dog Huang's artwork.

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