Mission name : ULISES I, world stage opera.

Satellite name : Ulises I , designed as an art process

Nationality of the mission : Mexico

Mission director, Juan José Díaz Infante

Author: The Mexican Space Collective

Composers, Cabezas de Cera, Arturo Márquez, Hugo Solis, Omar Gasca,

Hi Ku by Teresa Bordona and Fernando Castro

Programming

Juan Galindo y Julio Zaldivar

Sponsored by Fonoteca Nacional, PLAY Festival, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Centro Multimedia, Estudio Jamaica, IQH, Fundación BBV,  Relaciones Exteriores, INAOE, UNAM.

Curatorial statement:

ULISES I : A mission to space

Poetry, from the root poeisis, term used by many in relationship to the nature of the creative process, Cornelius Castoradis refered to it as the action of creation from a philosophical point of view,  Heidegger underlines the moment of pleasure produced when something is away from its original position to become something else.

In greek, poiesis, has to do with the action that gives transformation and continuity to the World.

The satellite will be designed by a team of artists brought together to form The Mexican Space Collective. The MSC is taking the term opera as its original concept, the construction of a hybrid. In the XVI century opera started adding music to greek theater, making it more easy to be watched by the italian royalty.

For the 21st century we are using the term opera as a new hybrid, with the new elements of our times. One genuine attempt of discourse for a possible future. Mcluhan used to say, you can not drive a car forward only looking through the back mirror.

The concept behind this particular art work is replacing the piece of art for its process. Revisiting the thought of Duchamp, the object of art is not the object of art, it is the center of discussion.

A multilevel opera, with many levels of writing.

Taking music as the art of writing it. The constant relationship between the score and the music. The satellite becomes in a certain way a musical instrument.

Everything starts with the need of an idea for the second edition of the PLAY! Festival. An idea to be coherent with the time of crisis we are living. Mexico is being overwhelmed by a terrible crisis, a drug war gone out of control. over 100, 000 deaths in the last 10 years. Not such a nice scenario for a young person to imagine a future. Ulises is a way to prove that there is the possibility of a different reality a different future. If we are able to launch a satellite to orbit with a team with no experience whatsoever in launching something like that before. A story on itself.

There is something deeper in the process of a machine sent to space, the approach of people to technology. Technology, I like to think of it as a way of thinking, it has little to do with the interphase. Dry technology, by itself is very little help, the medium needs content, and there is a problem of a World, very advanced, with nothing to say and no way to go. It is a problem that the term global does not apply to everyone. Very few people understand the ecology of technology, the matter seen as a system. We are trapped in the paradigm of technology, "Garbage in garbage out", when you input garbage data to a perfect model it gives you back garbage results, when you input good data to a garbage model, it gives garbage results. We are trapped in this endless cycle not understanding the potential of thinking and understanding technology in a deeper sense.

The opera will be written as an algorythm. Most probably will transmit data, to be decoded down on Earth.

The satellite will be designed as a musical instrument to "play" the opera and will be programed to interact with the composition.

Still Ulises the first is in its process of creation, and the Mexican Space Collective is very excited to participate in this mission.