NASA Moon Base Credit: NASA
I enjoy judging art contests. I particularly enjoy judging space art contests. I concluded my most recent space art judging experience Monday evening. In this case it was judging the student art that had been submitted to the National Space Society’s Roadmap to Space Settlement Student Art Contest.
The goal of the contest was to get students to create art that could be used to illustrate the NSS Milestones to Space Settlement: An NSS Roadmap – a document that was created for the purpose of laying out for the public the major milestones that will likely have to be passed and the major barriers that will have to be overcome in order for humanity to achieve the NSS vision of "People living and working in thriving communities beyond the Earth and the use of the vast resources of space for the dramatic betterment of humanity." The contest was organized and managed by Lynne Zielinski, the NSS Vice President of Public Affairs (and a member of the Chicago Society for Space Studies).
Unfortunately the contest was run on a very tight time line. The contest was announced on March 25 and the submissions deadline was April 22. Typically art contests provide much more time – both to provide time to promote the contest and to allow artists time to create their submission. However NSS wanted the contest completed in advance of their annual International Space Development Conference (May 23-27).
In spite of the limited time frame the contest received over 300 submissions. Unfortunately the overwhelming majority of these submissions were rejected since they did not meet the contest’s guidelines. Eliminating these non-qualifying submissions left the judges with 14 artworks to evaluate. This was reduced to 13 when it was discovered that one of the submissions was a fraud. The artist claimed to have created his submission using Photoshop and GIMP but the artwork was actually a NASA produced image of a lunar base! I have used that NASA image to illustrate this article. You may have previously seen this image on the NASA or Space.com web sites.
Judging art can be quite challenging at times. However, a well designed set of judging criteria that includes specific elements on which to judge the art helps. For this particular art contest, judges were expected to evaluate the art based on the following elements:
- the art features one of the milestones listed in the Roadmap to Space Settlement
- the milestone depicted contains sufficient evidence of accuracy
- the art is a realistic depiction
- the art represents more factually based science than fictional science
- the art uses accurate perspectives
- the art provides an uplifting, positive message of our future in space
- the art contains a high level of detail.
- the art appears to be created in a manner that is consistent with the method described by the artist.
- all elements of the art appear to be created by the artist
Each judge independently graded each image after which we met to confirm the grand prize winner and to ascertain how many First Prize and Honorable Mention awards would be given out. In the end it was decided to give one First Prize and one Honorable Mention award. The Grand Prize Winner was the entry Asteroid Mining Module and the First Prize Winner was INSPIRE Life – both of which topped my list point wise. An Honorable Mention was awarded to Jupiter Orbital Space Settlement.
It is likely that this contest will be held again next year and, hopefully, I will once again be asked to participate as a judge.
