Doing Art in Space

Escola Lestonnac Badalona call for education ideas 1 DOING ART IN THE SPACE Is weightlessness and art compatible? Introduction Could artwork be done in the space? How to do a painting in weightlessness conditions? These are the questions that we have proposed to our students. Lots of surprising hypothesis and solutions have risen to answer these questions. The activity has been suggested to students of 1st and 2nd of ESO of Lestonnac, a school placed in Sant Roc, an outlying area of Badalona, a city near Barcelona. The project members are boys and girls aged 12 to 14 coming from different parts of the world (Pakistan, India, Bolivia, Ecuador, China), who have not live in Spain for a long time ago, and native students who have serious problems of social exclusion, all of them guided by three teachers. The topic has been very well received by the students. And, despite of the important problems of communication between them due to the language, they have managed several strategies to reach the understanding, such as mime, drawings, manipulation of different materials, etc. Proposal Our students’ work aims for a painting done in weightlessness conditions. To do that, colours should be blended. But, could this blending be done in the space? After some work sessions and several attempts and discussions about different hypotheses, their proposal is the following: We want to make a painting in the space, so we might put some limits to our decisions. We will do it inside a box to avoid the Space Station walls getting dirty because of the paint. This box should be light, cheap, transparent and easily assembled because the astronauts themselves will have to build it. Materials: •••• 6 transparent plastic sheets (one of them with a hole that fits a hand). •••• 10 sheets of paper. •••• 1 paintbrush. •••• 1 silicone glove. •••• 1 sellotape roll. •••• 1 packet of wet wipes. •••• 5 injections filled with tempera of different colours (black, white, cyan, magenta and yellow.