In the endeavour to reach increasingly beyond earthly limits, various living creatures have been exposed to the harsh environments of space travel. As missions lengthen so does knowledge regarding impacts of long-term space expeditions on the character and composition of those beings jettisoned away from their terrestrial home.

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Currently when biological beings return from space they attempt to readapt and reintegrate to the conditions of earth, often with long-term physiological problems. But longer term missions may result in changes which could alter the forms of these beings irrevocably. Therefore the environment of space travel may re-shape and re-design life originating from earth as we know it.

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These model specimens reveal how beings, at one time thought to be terrestrial, change to the point that reintegration on earth would no longer be possible. For these beings the off planet environment has become the norm and their morphological changes make them alien from earth life.

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These biological beings are in a sort of adaptive purgatory, not yet fully comfortable in the new environment of space but also no longer finding comfort on their home planet, they are ‘alter-terrestrials’, not quite terrestrial, being of or from earth, and not quite extra-terrestrial, being of or from space, the alter-terrestrial is a being that exists between. These models show examples of the altered morphological forms that might be the stepping stones to life elsewhere.

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In collaboration with Nicholas Tamás

Funding and support from Non-Agency

Images below courtesy of MU Hybrid Art House Photographer Hanneke Wetzer

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