Here's a Robotic Moon Replacement for People Who Don't Want to Go Outside

The least that technology can do is attempt to solve the problems that it causes, so, to address our ongoing removal from the natural world, an artist designed a robotic sculpture to point to, and even function as, the Moon.

The Lunar Persistence Apparatus uses GPS, a digital compass, a table of lunar positions and phases, and dual motors to align itself with Earth's orbital companion. It then projects its own light from an 18-watt LED back up the moonbeams, bright enough to be seen during the day, even if that means projecting straight at the floor because the Moon is over Mumbai.

Image: Robb Godshaw

It looks like a spotlight used on set at a fake moon landing. The legs and base design were influenced by a trip to the Smithsonian's Air and Space museum and the 500 pictures its creator, Robb Godshaw estimates he took of every piece of space equipment that he could find there.

Lunar Persistence Apparatus from Robb Godshaw on Vimeo.

The LPA took 18 months, working on and off, to complete, and became Godshaw's final project in five different classes as he was earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University. With a legacy spanning from Deep Blue to Andy Warhol, and top-notch programs in both art and robotics, Godshaw told me that Carnegie Mellon was a great place to pursue what he calls "mechatronic art." It was positively Duchampian to hear him talk about how much you can get away with, as long as you call it a sculpture.

As an art project, the LPA has the liberty of not really needing to justify itself. The Moon-as-timepiece has long been supplanted by clocks and calendars, so what are we missing if it's a luxury that most of us take for granted, if we think of it at all?

"I've always been taken by how easy it is to forgot that we're currently on a rock traveling to space at unthinkable speeds," Godshaw told me. "On the increasingly rare occasions that we actually see the moon—given that we spend so much of our time indoors or in modes of transportation that don't allow us to look up at night—it's kind of a humbling and grounding thing to see something else that occupies the universe and to contemplate what's above."

It's hard to talk about the relationship between people and astronomy without sounding like you're veering into astrology, but even the well-credentialed occasionally wonder what we're losing when we lose track of the Moon. Media theorist and professor Douglas Rushkoff told Motherboard that keeping track of the cycles of the Moon was a way of staving off "present shock," and structured his writing of a book of the same name to a 28-day cycle, respecting an as-yet-unproven link between our brains and the Moon.

Godshaw's piece hints towards the same impulse.

"For while digital technology can serve to disconnect us from the cycles that have traditionally orchestrated our activities," Rushkoff told the WSJ. "It can also serve to bring us back into sync."

I doubt we'll ever all have Lunar Persistence Apparati in every workplace, but then I wouldn't have thought that monitors that transition from blue to orange light as the day continues would catch on, but people swear by those too. At the very least Godshaw has given us a video of a man dressed like a Ghostbuster shooting the Moon from a park, and if that doesn't make you think, maybe your mind-Moon link could use some maintenance.