A drawing of mine is laser-cut on a NASA PACE-1 Satellite, currently orbiting Earth.

I made a drawing of 100,000, commemorating those who died from the pandemic—which seems ridiculous at this point because so many more people died, but I still can’t comprehend the first 100,000. I made a drawing because I had to see it. I stare at it sometimes, imagining that every dot is a human with a richness of reality akin to my own—a richness that I will never know. It is overwhelming. I consider this image as it floats through space to be a memorial.

This drawing is mimetic of a Sierpinski Triangle, a pattern that is created by removing smaller triangles from a larger triangle, but instead, my piece is additive, not subtractive—an accumulation of dots. The absence of the empty triangles is striking next to the presence of the dots, indicating loss.

This drawing is also a priori, meaning that it is knowable in one’s mind without someone needing to know anything about reality, and without, I would argue, needing to be human. If alien life comes across this drawing in the future, they would know 100,000. They might not know why or where, but they would know that it existed, existed enough to be represented; and maybe, just maybe, they would also perceive a loss.

100,000 is part of an archive for art in outer space, Archive of Astronautical Art

Press:

Feynman Diagrams in Space, Caltech Magazine

Art in Space: The PACE-1 Technology Demonstration by Luke Idziak, NASA.gov

Feynman Diagrams in Space, Pasadena Now

Los diagramas de Feinmann, elevados a obra de arte en un satélite, notimérica

Ciencia.-Los diagramas de Feinmann, elevados a obra de arte en un satélite, MSN

La misión PACE-1 incluirá una exposición de arte orbital en su fuselaje, elPeriódico

Los diagramas de Feynmann, elevados a obra de arte en un satélite, Crónica

Ciencia.-Los diagramas de Feinmann, elevados a obra de arte en un satélite, Metro World News