Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology

The Moon Vehicle is an open project that uses the recent launch of Chandrayaan-1, and the beginnings of India’s moon missions, as a focus to draw out existing cultures of the moon and to create new cultures through events and dialogues.

Cultures can mean songs, stories and customs, connections people feel to the moon through observations, knowledge, science and technology, channels by which people learn about or focus on the moon, through media, teaching, watching tides, from living outside...

The project gives artists and designers access to science from the Indian Moon missions as a resource to make new work from. The key method of the project is to use the abilities of these art processes, to make links at the edges of subjects, between art and science, but also between the institutional and non-institutional. Art is a strategy to stream the science to other communities in engaging, thoughtful and critical ways.

The project currently has five strands:
• To stage participative, hybrid educational events.
• To understand and engage with data being sent from the spacecraft.
• To establish cross-disciplinary networks and friendships.
• To make objects that can be used as learning tools.
• To involve a virtual community internationally.

Its goals are:
• To widen opportunities for education and change the methods and reasons why space science is taught.
• To bridge the gap between Indian Space Research Organisation activities and the public.
• To draw out cultures of the Moon from an Indian perspective in ways that can influence future moon exploration.