[ The Earth at Feature Length - Art Experiments in Space] by Ine Poppe
Article about the 7th Space & Arts Workshop published in the NRC Handelblad - June 4, 2004

Two ballet dancers glide in a small still cabin. A man in tights moves a ballerina effortlessly like the second-hand of a clock. She floats upside-down, her legs elegantly sticking in the air. I'm watching a dance in weightlessness.
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[ The Art of Life is Universal ] by Hans-Arthur Marsiske
Interview in spacedaily.com - June 27, 2002

One might say his studio is the universe, because the art work of Arthur Woods focuses on space. The Swiss-American artist who lives near Zurich conceived and built the first sculpture designed for a zero-gravity habitat and actually managed to exhibit it on the Mir space station. Continue..

[ Choosing a Space Age or a Stone Age ]
by Arthur R. Woods and Marco C. Bernasconi
Article in Space News - Oct. 2- 8, 1995

There is no need to list the many challenges facing humanity as it enters the next century. Be they environmental, political, economic or social, the problems are both obvious and immediate. Most can be linked to the overwhelming success of the human species over the past 200 hundred years - a success that has resulted in it occupying every available niche and exploiting every available earthly resource for living, working and maintaining its society. With the human population presently growing at a rate of almost 100 million persons a year, is it not too soon to ask a fundamental question: "Has humanity outgrown its home planet Earth?" Continue...

[ Why Art in Space? = Why Space? ]
by Arthur Woods - Excerpted from the Tate-in-Space discussion. November 11, 2002

Approximately 100 years ago, at the beginning of the modernist era and of "modern art", the avantgarde was characterized by its confidence and optimism about the future. They held the firm belief that the industrial age was opening many new territories to explore and that art, in its most noble and explicit way, would find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained. There was no sense that civilization would ever be threatened by the very forces that fueled their optimism. There were no statistics about pollution, overpopulation, ozone holes, and resource shortages to numb the senses and to counter their optimism. Continue...

[ A Brief History of Space Art ] by Arthur Woods - published on ars astronautica 1996-2003

Space exploration is the greatest voyage of discovery ever undertaken and, as artists have traditionally accompanied explorers on many of the great voyages of scientific and geographic discovery, artists have also been at the forefront of space exploration since its beginnings. Continue...

[ The Exploration of Space by Artists and Writers ]
by Arthur Woods, Published in the ITSF Brochure- Innovative Technologies From Science Fiction for Space Applications, European Space Agency, 2000

Throughout history, artists have traditionally accompanied explorers on many of the great voyages of scientific and geographic discovery. Space exploration is the greatest voyage of discovery ever undertaken and artists have been at the forefront from the beginning. Continue...

[ Inflatable Technologies for Sculpture in Earth Orbit ] by Arthur Woods - Excerpt from a lecture given at the International Space University, Strasbourg, France, February, 2003

A number of artists have made proposals for creating monumental artworks to be placed in Earth orbit which could be seen with unaided vision by those on Earth. While there has been a variety of technologies suggested most of the proposals have utilized some form of inflatable space technology. Continue...

[ Technical Specifications and Launch Preparations of the Cosmic Dancer Sculpture ] by Arthur Woods - Tate-in-Space Discussion, December 12, 2002

For its integration in the Mir station the "Cosmic Dancer Sculpture" had to be both compact and lightweight. A weight limit of 1 kg and approximate dimensions of 35 x 35 x 40 cm were agreed to. The weight requirement was determined by the per kilogram cost of the launch and this influenced the ultimate proportions of the sculpture which were then optimized in insure easy movement of the sculpture inside the Mir station and, of course to meet my aesthetic criteria. Continue...

[ Cosmonaut Alexander Polischuk's commentary on the Cosmic Dancer Sculpture ] by Alexander Polischuk - Mir Space Station, 1993

...to find oneself in weightlessness in space is an entirely new phenomena for a human being who has lived his entire life on Earth. It is even difficult to explain what kind of feeling that is. Continue...

[ Cosmonaut Thomas Reiter's comments on the Ars Ad Astra Exhibition on Mir ] by Thomas Reiter - Mir Space Station/Transinne, Belgium, November 30, 1995

.....and let me tell you that there are many things here on board which keep us alive, of course technical systems which produce oxygen to breathe, water to drink which clean the air from carbon dioxide, food and all these things which help to keep us alive, life support systems. But I can tell you that this kind of thing (he holds up a picture) are a part of what is necessary to keep us alive, to keep the memory to the Earth, to our families, to our friends, to the nature. Continue...