Space Synapse, an Irish project at the cutting edge of both art and scientific research, wants to install an interactive work of art on board the International Space Station within the next two years. Its aim - to give the world a means of communicating with astronauts through what it calls a "symbiotic sphere" - may on first hearing sound as plausible as a Jules Verne sci-fi novel.
The distinctly 21st-century accessory - a globe of etched metal decorated with precious stones, dotted with tactile sensors, microphone and speakers, screens and cameras - aims to let people watching from Earth see inside the spacecraft and far into outer space.
But this fantasy-like project, given the nod by the European Space Agency last year, has every chance of being made a reality by the time the Columbus space laboratory - the European part of the ISS - is launched in 2007.
Ireland is one of the main participants in the European Space Programme, and, as such, has the definitive say over where its own contribution goes.
So, last week, Space Synapse's "symbiotic sphere" was given the green light by government agency Invest Ireland, who declared the project feasible, and also by the Irish Space Agency, which offered to help with the project.
Based in the heart of the Digital Hub, a government initiative designed to create a "high-tech" core of scientific excellence in the centre of Dublin, Space Synapse was born out of the creative collaboration of a British artist, an astrophysics researcher, several engineers, computer specialists and an expert in business and marketing.
Inspired by her life-long fascination with the northern lights, trained sculptress and former resident artist at Dublin's modern art gallery, Anna Hill began to transform herself three years ago into the executive of a highly original fledgling business.
She is now looking for new partners with whom she hopes to build the first prototype of the "symbiotic sphere," a product which Hill, now 37, believes will allow people to study the way in which human beings experience life in outer space.
With its "symbiotic sphere," Space Synapse aims, by means of live interaction between astronauts and people on Earth, to "democratise the experience of life in space," which at present is only accessible to millionaires such as Virgin head Richard Branson, Hill told AFP.
The artist-cum-scientist-cum-entrepreneur wants to "make the emotional experience of astronauts available to the greatest number of people possible."
The astronauts "will be able to focus the cameras on the interior or the exterior of their passenger booth, to communicate by speech, writing or by gestures with the sphere," she explains. The futuristic globe will also collect, and immediately transmit, recorded data by means of electrodes and transducers fixed to the side of the astronauts' bodies, she says.
Back on earth, their correspondents will be comfortably installed in a "cosmic egg," an audio-visual cabin equipped with a reclining seat specially designed for the venture by Oculas, Space Synapse's partner company which also makes Formula 1 racing seats for MacLaren.
The possibility of analysing the data collected from the spacecraft has already attracted the attention of numerous researchers, chiefly doctors specialising in the study of astronauts' bio-rhythms.
Universities from Italy and the United States, along with international organisations such as UNESCO, have already entered into partnership with Space Synapse, intrigued by the potential for technological exchanges.
But, for an artist, the task of convincing all these scientists and institutions priding themselves on the purity of their research that a cultural project with a sculptress at its helm was worth bothering with, was not easy.
"It was at first intimidating to win over an audience of scientists and astronauts," Hill remembers. "At first I was considered a big oddity. But I found the astronauts incredibly open and communicative and genuine about their experiences."
And now, finally, after years of campaigning, brainstorming and cajoling of the technological world, the "symbiotic sphere" has lift off.
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