Exotopia Launch Event
7 PM - 10 PM
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Proof of vaccination is required for all attendees over 12 years of age. Learn more
View our FAQ page for more info, or contact us at [email protected] with your accommodation requests.
Exotopia is an experimental storytelling experience, which invites you to join imaginary voyages to study alien life on real exoplanets in our galaxy, using real scientific data from the SETI Institute to imagine where extraterrestrial life could actually exist.
Each voyage is crafted by a guest science fiction writer, and includes multiple storylines for a constellation of characters. You may be a starship pilot, a science officer, or even a stowaway. Over the course of 30 days, you will get a daily update to your character’s story. Your character may achieve greatness, spark a mutiny, or die in space.
Key moments in your story get illustrated by NFTs, created by a featured artist. These include visual renderings of your original ticket, plot twists, and your completed story. These unique artworks are yours to keep, exchange, or sell on the NFT marketplace.
The Exotopia Launch event is the start of your 30 day journey. Buying a ticket to this event gets you access to the Exotopia story, in addition to an exclusive, attendees only pilot journey. The Exotopia team will provide stations to set up your wallet, and the NFTs will be airdropped directly to you during the event.
Exotopia creator Scott Kildall will present the Exotopia project, discuss the exciting aspect of Exoplanets, and guide you to a map of known exoplanets in a VR installation along with a visual display of featured Exotopia stories.
We will also feature artworks from Bettina Forget, generated with the help of Midjourey, which are NFT illustrations of her Rouge45 Exotopia voyage.
The SETI Institute is a non-profit research organization, located in the Silicon Valley close to the NASA Ames Research Center. Our mission is to lead humanity's quest to understand the origins and prevalence of life and intelligence in the universe and share that knowledge with the world.
Scott Kildall has been working with art + technology + education for over 15 years and is an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute. His work looks at the interplay between territory and technology and aims to repurpose technology for liberation rather than replication and augmentation of power structures, as often happens without artistic intervention. He is an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute and runs his own artist-in-residency program, Xenoform Labs in San Francisco to support new media artists from outside of the Bay Area.
Bettina Forget is a curator, art educator, researcher, and visual artist. In her role as SETI AIR Director she facilitates the collaboration between artists and SETI researchers, foregrounds art-science research practice, and establishes a network of institutional partners active in art, science, and technology. Her creative work explores astronomy, science fiction, and feminism, and she has exhibited her projects nationally and internationally in both artistic and scientific institutions. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, where she examines the re-contextualization of art and science, and how trans-disciplinary education may disrupt gender stereotypes.
Dr. Paul Dalba is astrophysicist affiliated with the University of California in Santa Cruz and the SETI Institute. He uses telescope facilities on the Earth and in space to discover and characterize gas giant exoplanets throughout the galaxy. He also supports citizen science efforts in astronomy and planetary science. Previously, Dalba worked in the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and on missions to the asteroid belt, Saturn and its moons, and Pluto.
Samantha Tan is a traveling artist, climate change activist, entrepreneur, and NFT creator. Her work spans from sculpture and performance to digital illustration. Her work often centers around collaborations with the diverse people in Web3. She seeks to create real world impact on climate change by creating a community for sustainability within the Web3 space. Tan’s first NFT artwork was a chain agnostic collaboration with Nathaniel Stern called Phoney Plants. Tan is currently working towards building an NFT coalition as part of her new project, Concerned Plant Society. In addition to NFTs, Tan is also a co-founder of Eco Labs, a company working in the cross section of climate x crypto.
Gary Thomson is a recovering IT engineer writing science-fiction and fantasy stories in Seattle, WA. His writing pokes at the absurdity of modern life with humor and compassion and elevates our mundane struggles by contrasting grounded, sympathetic characters with fantastic challenges.
