Santa Fe: Come see Neal Stephenson, NASA's Pete Worden, Los Alamos's Nina Lanza, JPL's Sasha Samochina (and me!) at the Interplanetary Festival!

I'm one of several guests appearing at the first-ever Interplanetary Festival, coming up Jun 7/8 in Santa Fe, New Mexico; it's a science festival that's part of the larger Futurition|Santa Fe festival, which includes live music, open air events, gaming, art installations, performances, and all-ages events.


Futurition|Santa Fe opens June 7 with the Santa Fe Institute's InterPlanetary Festival, a two-day exploration into human ingenuity, innovation and technology around space exploration. The event combines lectures and discussions from leading "spacerati" including Cory Doctorow, Sasha Samochina and Martine Rothblatt, with a range of interplanetary-related activities spanning the weekend. Concurrent with the expo, participants can enjoy open-air concerts from Ozomatli and DJ/VJ Max Cooper, sample food and drink, explore maker spaces and citizen science projects, and join in games centered on Interplanetary topics.

On June 8, the Currents New Media Festival, now in its ninth year, launches within Futurition|Santa Fe, showcasing boundary-breaking artists from the worlds of interactive art installations, multimedia performance, virtual and augmented reality, robotics, video, animation, app projects, and experimental documentaries. From more than 580 projects submitted from artists globally, the 90 most innovative works will be showcased in and around the Santa Fe Railyard through June 24.

Other Select Partner Exhibits and Events

From May 25-July 21, form & concept will present Inner Orbit, an exhibition of contemporary artists from across the U.S. who will present their interpretations of how the night sky reveals countless overlapping mythologies among its densely layered cultural landscape. Visitors will find out how fortune tellers, sailors, writers, architects and artists have all projected profound meaning into the cosmos—tying earthly events to the movements of heavenly bodies.

Beginning June 7 and offered during select weekend times throughout June, Axle Contemporary invites visitors to experience a premiere a multi-sensory perceptual ride: Auger's Iris. Housed in a 1970s aluminum stepvan, Iris merges rhythmic sound, pulsating light and cymatic resonance, inducing somatic experience beyond the boundaries of the mind and providing a glimpse of the infinite universe within the human brain.

Opening June 15 with a reception from 5:00-7:00pm and featuring a pre-event discussion from exhibit curator Kelani Nichole on June 10, Art House will feature TRANSFER Download, a virtual exhibition of artists exploring simulation, algorithm, procedural animation and online practice. With multiple artworks installed in one hyperspace, a hyperlinked display allows viewers to switch between pieces to experience an immersive survey of the art.

Interplanetary Festival

(Thanks, Krista!)