The interaction between art and science has contributed significantly to humanity throughout the centuries, leading to discoveries that have shaped our current cultural and scientific landscape. It shows diverse human abilities to express and blend technical proficiency, delicacy, emotional power, and conceptual and analytical ideas. Today, we have potent technological aids for making discoveries, such as supercomputers, particle accelerators, and space telescopes, but imagination and creativity remain our most potent attributes in problem-solving. In some cases today, humans cannot perfectly observe things in the microcosm and macrocosm, which leads to the question of how to communicate observations made with advanced technologies more intricately and excitingly. We believe that hand illustrations are still as potent as they were in the times of Leonardo Da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, and Charles Darwin. This study focuses on human perception to reimagine the life and evolution of rotifers on Earth and on board the International Space Station (ISS) using a series of hand drawings. The molecular and genetic scale of a series of space biology experiments with rotifers inspires the drawings. The drawings are preparatory studies for sculptures in the Ēngines of Ēternity project of SEADS. Ēngines of Ēternity uses the biological phenomena of cloning and DNA repair as metaphorical departure points for a series of evolving art installations about humanity's fascination with cultural immortality. The project is a collaboration between the SEADS collective and the scientific laboratory of Karine Van Doninck (ULB/UNamur). In a series of space biology experiments with rotifers, thumb-printed glyphs were added by SEADS as abstract codes, which were first sent to the ISS in 2019. Upon return, these visual codes were evolved using the genetic response of the rotifer's exposure to the space environment. This method subsequently became the starting point for a larger three-dimensional parametric artwork. To confront the project's visual and aesthetic challenges, hand illustrations were fundamental in opening up the possibility of thinking outside the limitations of digital aids such as design software. The hand illustrations encompass an abstract and highly subjective artistic reimagination building on understanding complex biological activities and dynamics within the rotifer's DNA. This work aims to explore a new visual spectrum in a comprehensive and exciting approach to artistic engagements with experimental space science.

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Ēngines of Ēternity is a transdisciplinary project that takes the biological phenomena of cloning and DNA repair as metaphorical departure points for an art installation about humanity’s enthrallment with cultural immortality. Cultural immortality has long fascinated humankind, with such diverse examples as Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, Hindu kingdoms, and Mayan civilization, all assuming perpetuity through monumental works in art and architecture. This aspiration of cultural immortality is also deeply embedded in the imaginary of space exploration. Space settlements are often presented as the culmination of technological and cultural evolution. However, the quest for cultural immortality is often imbued with conflict because of convictions of superiority and impulses of colonialism, and this will be no different in outer space. Ēngines of Ēternity explores these human tendencies through the lens of the smallest animals on Earth, rotifers. On the surface, rotifers seem an unchanging biological culture, perfected through evolution, cloning itself endlessly, and surviving extreme conditions such as complete drying or freezing. However, during drying and rehydration, genetic material gets broken and repaired again, and in the process, diversity is generated. Moreover, DNA from totally different organisms such as fungi, bacteria and plants were discovered inside the rotifer’s genome. This horizontal gene transfer is another mechanism through which rotifers seek out diversity. In Ēngines of Ēternity it’s precisely this contrast between stasis and flux that is used as a metaphorical device to reflect critically on the aspirations of humankind in space. What concept of culture and identity will we develop in space? Who will have a say in this? And if we end up with a rich diversity of cultures and identities, how will we maintain cohesion? Ēngines of Ēternity is a joint effort between SEADS and the laboratory of Karine Van Doninck (UNamur/ULB). In a series of space biology experiments, rotifers were sent to the ISS in 2019 and 2020. SEADS sent a series of thumb-printed glyphs along with the rotifers. This code formed the algorithmic seed for an evolving artwork. After each space mission genetic data of the rotifers was used to parametrically evolve the art. As such, Ēngines of Ēternity engenders new forms of co-creation between humans, biological organisms, algorithms, and outer space. In this paper, the core concepts of the Ēngines of Ēternity project are presented, together with reflections on transdisciplinary research and the need for a more holistic perspective on our future in outer space.@en