Akihiro Kubota’s ARTSAT1:INVADER Launches Generative Art Satellite

ARTSAT project, a collaboration between Tama Art University and The University of Tokyo, launched the world’s first art satellite, ARTSAT1: INVADER. This 10 cm cube satellite, weighing 1.85 kg, was actually a work of generative art. It successfully carried out artistic missions from orbit, including generating and transmitting synthesized voice, music and poems from space. The satellite was also “cybernetic” in that it could incorporate feedback, capturing and transmitting image data and communicating with the ground via a chatbot. ARTSAT1 was in space for around six months and demonstrates humanity’s curiosity to dream about space and art—perhaps more seriously since space dominated the imagination of technologists in the ’60s.