Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture

Lowry Burgess defies categorization, often blurring the lines between scientific inquiry and artistic expression. From pioneering the Space Art movement to publishing a manifesto that called for UNESCO to consider financial incentives for heritage site preservation efforts, Burgess designs visionary projects that will continue for centuries into the future. The Quiet Axis begun in 1966 and finished in 2007, is his most wide-reaching and ambitious initiative to date. Burgess envisions that this project will extend into the future while reaching back in time by engaging ancient sites of civilization and fossilized materials. Through The Quiet Axis he started a dialogue with the space community, leading to the launch of Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture into space on board the Discovery shuttle in 1989, as well as his collaborative project The MoonArk. The latter aimed to send the first “museum” – a 6-ounce, 2-inch high structure containing hundreds of images, poems, music, and earth samples – to the moon. Burgess’s work is not defined by medium or locale, but rather a desire to forge connections between humanity, the future, and the unknown.

Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture is a part of The Quiet Axis. Incorporating holograms, paintings, and organic materials, his project could conceivably survive into the distant future. For The Quiet Axis, Burgess aims to create an imaginary axis that passes through the sun, the earth, and into the cosmos with pieces of the project spread out across the world, in the deepest crevices of the ocean to the highest mountain tops. The box buried in the Sculpture Park consists of nesting cubes, water from eighteen rivers around the world, organic materials from far-reaching locales, and all elements from the Periodic Table. In addition to life on Earth, The Quiet Axis also concerns the mysteries of space. Over the span of a decade, Burgess worked with NASA to launch the innermost cube of Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture into space, making history as the first officially sanctioned work of art in orbit. After its arrival back on Earth, Burgess placed Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture in a 400-million-year old glacial rock at deCordova on the shores of Flint’s Pond, connecting the skies above to the earth’s geological formation.