Sentience:  The Study and Exploration of an Intelligent Planet

While designing scientific instruments for NASA, chemist and planetary scientist James Lovelock developed his now famous theory, the Gaia hypothesis.  The Gaia hypothesis suggest that organisms co-evolve with their environment. Further, it suggests that this co-evolution represents a kind of intelligence at a planetary scale.  This idea, when viewed historically as aligned to the first and seminal photograph of the Earth from space taken by the crew of Apollo 17 not only expanded the notion of the interconnectedness and fragility of life on Earth, but in doing so launched the modern environmental movement. 

The idea of the Earth as a singular living and sentient being, however, is much older than these scientific discoveries, and in fact is evident in the scientific and spiritual perspectives of many cultures.  When he was 17 years old the great Oglala Sioux medicine man Black Elk, cousin of the iconic Crazy Horse, revealed the totality of a sacred vision in which he was taken to space by the Great Thunder Beings and shown the world as a great and interconnected tree of life. 

Indeed, as our sciences delve deeper into the question of who and what can be ascribed sentience, the notion of sentience has been continually and rapidly expanding to larger and larger life forces. The natural world seems to continue to surprise us with how interconnected and even conscious large and small biological forces are.  

As an artist I have been interested in understanding this interconnectivity and the notion of a singular and sentient planet for both the scientific and spiritual advancement that this concept affords.  As our earth observation capacity increases exponentially through satellite technology, I have been deeply inspired by ways in which this technology has broadened our understanding of the planet philosophically, but also, how this observation technology allows us to move towards ever more effective management of the various systems of what Buckminster Fuller called Spaceship Earth.  

The paintings were made during a three month artist residency with Planet Labs during a period of daily study of the earth from space using Planet’s constellation of over 180 satellites that provide daily-updated high resolution images of the entire earth.  

These paintings are akin the plein air paintings of the Impressionists, in that their aim is not a photorealistic representation of the view, but rather an attempt to capture the essence, or character of the landscape.  Much of the palate is a tribute to the variety of ways in which color is used in the analysis of the satellite imagery captured daily by Planet’s fleet of Doves, and how enhancing images through color manipulation optimizes our ability to see the same situation, the same environment in new ways.  This is the very essence of a planetary scale sentient organism looking at itself in a space mirror.  

Ian Cion

Earthsuits: Paintings by Ian Cion

In 2015 while serving as the founding director of the Arts in Medicine Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Ian Cion began working on a series of space suits in collaboration with NASA, ILC Dover, who have made space suits for NASA since the Apollo era, and the astronaut Nicole Stott. Cion and Stott traveled to hospitals around the world, setting up art studios for patients, families and staff. Artwork made in these hospital sessions were collected and arranged by Cion then sewn together by ILC Dover. Several of these colorful space suits were flown on Space X rockets to the International Space Station and worn by astronauts on board. While in the suits, the astronauts live-streamed down to the patients and families that worked on the project, many of whom gathered at Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston, or watched from hospitals around the world as their artwork orbited 250 miles above the Earth at 17,500 miles per hour. This project led Cion into a further collaboration with ILC Dover, where he consulted on the design of several new space suits in development for both NASA and private space companies.

Learning from these efforts and looking at the current state of the world, Cion became interested in the idea which he calls Earthsuits, a new type of functional clothing that mitigates against a host of environmental and cultural dangers and creates a mobile and climate controlled environment that is designed and produced in a way that does not contribute to the problems it seeks to protect against. While inspired by spacesuits, Cion’s aesthetic draws heavily on a range of artistic traditions, most especially collage and quilting. This aesthetic emphasizes the idea that time itself creates beauty and that things aged and cherished are enhanced by the patina of wear. Cion, in working to create Earthsuits that are as much biological as technological, has arrived at a significant moment in the design process, one that is perhaps best visualized not through slick 3D renders or holograms, but by the soft and hand-made quality of his paint and fabric collage.