The New York Times Spotlights Professor Eduardo Kac’s Space Art

School of the Art Institute of Chicago Professor Eduardo Kac (MFA 1990) has realized an artistic goal he set in 1986. The New York Times reported on this feat and Kac’s career.

Kac’s ‘holopoem’ Ágora was created in 1986 with the intention to be sent into orbit. Thirty-eight years later, the work is scheduled to be released into space from the Vulcan Centaur in January 2024. The work is a miniature piece of glass encoded with a hologram of the word Ágora, kept in a Titanium 5 case inscribed Ágora. It is barely half an inch in diameter. In Portuguese, agora means “now,” whereas accented Ágora changes its meaning to “place.”

Kac continues to be a pioneer in art and technology. His career spans Porn Art Movement’s guerilla performances, Minitel Art, and “bio-art." Ágora is the second of three works by Kac to reach outer space, and the first to be released into orbit. His paper sculpture Inner Telescope was realized in 2017 aboard the International Space Station. Another glasswork, Adsum, is scheduled to be planted on the moon in 2025.