#Raygun gothic rocketship series#

'We want it to be disorienting,' Shulman said, 'and create doubt: is it real, or is it not. I asked Orlando and Shulman how the idea for the Raygun Gothic Rocket ship began, and Orlando said that, from the beginning, they wanted to work on a retro rocket based on a romantic 1940s aesthetic.Ī big part of that, said Orlando, whose father was a NASA contractor, was building up a sense of the excitement and innocence around space travel that still existed in the 1930s and 1940s, when science fiction was 'still very positive and wide-eyed' and people saw nearly unlimited potential for space.Īdded Shulman, the idea was to bring out that sense of wonder that perhaps went away a bit when the Cold War kicked in and politicians took the space program into another direction.Īnd for participants who visit the rocket, Shulman said, the hope is that they will walk away with the feeling that they got to take part in a 'real rocket from the 1940s.' For that, the team is utilizing 1930s and 1940s-era hand-cranked telephones. Lead Artists: Sean Orlando, David Shulman, Nathanial Taylor. The pilot will have access to communications so that he (or she) can talk to those in the compartments below. Raygun Gothic Rocketship, the latest public art project by the Black Rock Arts Foundation, is now open on Pier 14 in San Francisco and will be on display until October 7th, 2011. The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is a rococo retro-futurist future-rustic vernacular between yesterday’s tomorrow and the future that never was, a critical kitsch somewhere between The Moons of Mongo & Manga Nouveau. The chair will be made to rotate around, and allow the pilot to engage with the ship's flight controls. To this end, we designed lighting and surface treatments that maximize the perception of the abstract rocket ship form and illuminated the piece to emphasize its scale and Space-Age aesthetics.At the top of the rocket is the cockpit, where a lovely pilot's chair will be installed. Photo about modern, south, retro, raygun, bridge, california, kitsch, water, street, spaceship, states. In refurbishing this piece for installation at The Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum the focus was on matching the scale and surfaces of the large air- and spacecraft displayed at the museum, while reflecting back these forms in a playful and imaginative way. The Raygun Gothic Rocketship in San francisco. In 2017 the piece was refurbished and permanently installed at the Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum in Denver. This gleaming, retro-futuristic beacon sculpture was installed from 2010-2013 at Pier 14 on San Francisco’s Embarcadero waterfront, during which time it was featured in publications such as Wired, Popular Mechanics, and the Wall Street Journal. The RAYGUN GOTHIC ROCKETSHIP is a grant funded large-scale group installation piece, fiscally sponsored by The Crucible.

#Raygun gothic rocketship series#

Five Ton Crane art group’s Raygun Gothic Rocketship was spearheaded by Lead Artists Sean Orlando, Nathaniel Taylor, and David Shulman. The 40-foot-tall art piece, The Raygun Gothic Rocketship, offers rococo-futuristic, highly-stylized vision of space travel circa 1930s-1940s science fiction and is the latest in a series of temporary public art exhibitions sponsored by BRAF with the aim of enlivening and activating public spaces.