Fantastic Machine is a project launched by the Photography Department at IDarte. Its aim is to collaborate with various art education institutions to develop an experimental methodology based on image, movement, and sound.
During the 2024–2025 academic year, the schools IDarte, IES Eibar, EASD-AGDE Iruña, and IES Llanes took part in the project. The work uses as its starting point NASA’s 1977 Voyager mission—an initiative to establish contact between humans and extraterrestrial life. Inspired by the film Fantastic Machine by Axel Danielson and Maximilien Van Aertryck, the project partially mirrors NASA’s mission and invites students to send greetings from Earth to possible extraterrestrial beings.
To that end, students engaged in both individual and group work, with each class producing a set of 116 photographs. And not just images—students also created a sound archive. After this initial phase, the collected visual and audio materials from each school were shared and remixed to create videos that, through audiovisual storytelling, bring a unique and meaningful narrative to life using this collage of sounds and images.
But how did we encourage students to engage with such a mission? We asked them the following questions: What can I contribute through my gaze in front of another’s eyes? How do I want to represent the world I live in? How do I want it to be seen from the outside? And in the society I inhabit, how do I want it to be?
It’s worth noting that in 1977 the Voyager probe decided not to send any images or sounds that depicted horror or violence from Earth. Of course, in our project, we chose not to impose similar limits—encouraging students to freely experiment and express themselves artistically.
Once the project was completed, we were invited by IES Eibar to include Fantastic Machine in their annual exhibition at Sala Museo del Portal de Eibar (C/Bista-Eder, 10). The exhibition will feature all student works and will be open to the public from April 4th to 27th, Tuesday to Sunday, 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM.
- Location
- · Sala Museo del Portal de Eibar, Portalea Kultur Etxea. Bista-Eder Kalea, 10, 20600 Eibar, Gipuzkoa
- Opening hours
- · April 4 – 27 → 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM Tuesday to Sunday
