saganappreciationsociety.org

Broca Would Be Pleased

Thanks to John Boswell, Sagan Appreciation Society members once again get a sneak preview of the upcoming Symphony of Science piece "Ode to the Brain". It's sure to finally crack the zombie demographic.

You can download the preview at one of two links:

MediaFire

Colorpulse

As usual, please do not post these links elsewhere.

Many months in the waiting (see clues below) "The Big Beginning" is finally ready. John Boswell offers SAS members a preview below. Typically, SAS members get a few days advance preview but with the Sagan's COSMOS Art Show in Ithaca on Jan. 21st, there wasn't time to show the preview earlier.

Carl Sagan inspired people in different ways. Sometimes that inspiration resulted in art.

Carl spent the last half of his life in eclectic and lovely Ithaca, NY where Cornell University is located. Ithaca is a small but cosmopolitan city that is rich in both science and art. No wonder the Light In Winter festival has been held there for years. Light In Winter is a week-long event all about that blending of science and art. We encourage you to explore their web site, LightInWinter.com.

Because this season marks the 30th anniversary of the airing of COSMOS: A Personal Voyage, the Sagan Appreciation Society contacted the Light In Winter organizers about observing this landmark series' anniversary by including a Sagan/COSMOS themed art show. They loved the idea. Carl's son, Nick Sagan, will deliver a multi-media address about his father's legacy of COSMOS, including the more recent Symphony Of Science phenomenon. Symphony Of Science's blending of music, science, philosophy and video has served to generate interest in Carl's work among the younger generations. Much of the past year's Sagan-related artwork has clearly been influenced by John Boswell's Symphony Of Science.

If you are interested in submitting your work for this prestigious event, please first send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with the subject "Sagan/COSMOS Art Show". Please attach the highest-resolution submissions that you can and state how physically large your work is when ready to display. In your email, attach the high-res digital preview for the show's brochure/catalog, and include your name, your piece's title, list the media used, and prices if the original or reproductions are for sale. Include an artist's statement. The statement will be included in the show catalog and can include the artist's contact information. Please list the physical dimensions of your art so we can plan how to integrate it. All art will be returned after the show closes. For questions, call Patrick Fish at (315) 733-4064.

All media, including drawings, photographs, collages, digital compositions, paintings, reliefs, sculpture and pop-culture ephemera are welcome.

Your artwork should be ready to hang (on a neat foamboard or preferably matted and framed). Please have your physical works arrive by January 7th, 2011. Works can also be 3D, as with these sample Sagan sneakers, but it's up to the artist as to how such 3D works are hung on the wall. If you are not the artist, but own a piece of Sagan/Cosmos themed art, you can still submit works as long as you let us know the artist's name. Pieces will be hung Jan. 7th, 2011 so we need to receive them by then.

If your work is a smaller digital bitmap and does not scale up well to typical art-show sizes, you can either use software that converts pixel-based art to vectors, or you can try one of the enlarger plugins or standalone tools that do a remarkable job of increasing resolution without increasing jaggedness of the image.

After approval of your emailed sample art, send your physical works of Sagan-inspired art to the following address. (Pre-approved submissions do not need to wait and can send their pieces in immediately.)

Patrick Fish, C/O Sally Grubb

Tompkins County Public Library

101 East Green Street

Ithaca, NY 14850

If your submitted work is a one of a kind with actual commercial value, we suggest shipping by an insured method that requires a signature. UPS, FedEx and the post office all offer this. We will ship insured pieces back with insurance.

If you would like your submission to become a permanent part of the Sagan Art Collection to be viewed at later events and venues, please send us an email stating that. Please include your name on the back of your submitted piece.

John Boswell has been kind enough to give the Sagan Appreciation Society a sneak peek at the next SOS music video.  It has Arthur C. Clarke's Amiga 2000 computer, which does sound suspiciously like Prof. Hawking's speech synthesis unit. Frankly, Clarke's choice of computers makes us think he knew more about computing than anybody else at the table.

In any event, enjoy this video on the big bang with Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson and LHC researcher Tara Shears.  Video to follow...