0RBIT

This is an artwork that tells you exactly how many people are in space,
right now.

My thoughts:

Orbit is an artwork, that tells you how many people are in space right now.

Knowing how many people are in orbit is not necessarily useful information in your daily abouts, but it is profound to think that there are people literally at the edge of our physical boundaries.

Since the year 2000, there has not been a single moment where the entire human race was together on Earth. There has been a permanent, unbroken human occupancy in the vacuum of space for over two decades.

Recently the term reality has been used here and there in the form of virtual, augmented, hyper, or alternative realities. But it got me to thinking that there are people at the edge who are really expanding what we call reality. At great expense, they are pushing what we once believed was unrealistic into the territory of reality. Whether these newly found realities are to the benefit of humanity is a secondary discussion.

This artwork connects us to those in orbit. For years I have tracked this myself, searching for news of who has gone up or come down, and it was a surprise to me that these numbers change more frequently than one might think. The display you see is in two digits, but in our lifetime will it ever reach three? What condition is our planet going to be in once we reach that milestone?

Freddie H.