You should rate both of my entries in Archinect’s Michael Jackson Memorial Competition.  Be honest, of course, and check out all the other entries.  There’s some really fun (and some terrible) ideas.  Plenty of them involve launching something into space…

1.) Moonshot

Thousands of Golden Michael Jackson statuettes, molded from the confiscated and recycled Grammy statuettes won my those in the hundred or so categories no one cares about (Best Album for Children, Best Hawaiian Music Album, Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package, Best Album Notes: Classical, Best Contemporary World Music Album, etc).

Twenty years later, NASA is surprised by the surge in applications for the astronaut program, saving it from irrelevance.  Michael Jackson is awarded a posthumous Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the first astronaut to receive this honor.

2.) Sputnik

1:  The metal smith bravely swallows his vomit as the molten gold vaporizes his floating drops of sweat. It was alright; only in the incorruptibility of microgravity could he produce this object.  He had seen the first moonwalk, remembered how a signifier motion was transformed to produce its opposite, and how it thrilled him.

2:  The form of the object in front of him now contradicts itself.  A trick of its own representation exploited to make it appear to do something impossible.

3:  It is finished, taken outside to the vacuum, and launched.

4:  Those old enough to remember Sputnik are reminded of that insistent “beep beep beep” that died long ago.

Afterwards: In spite of its best intentions, the golden monument to the illusion of contradiction is pulled back to the Earth; the atmosphere converting metal back to fireball for anyone that cared to notice.

Winners of the juried competition as well as the “people’s choice” are announced on Sept. 4th.  Help me win the t-shirt or whatever they’re giving away as a prize!