Forget Cape Canaveral. The coolest piece of space gear these days is in Brooklyn. Artist Gregory Green is building a replica of the first-ever satellite, Sputnik 1. Oh, and then he's going to put it into orbit.
As you may have gathered, Green is not your everyday creative type. His past work includes a fully functional nuclear device (sans plutonium), suitcase bombs, and a collection of glass vials purportedly filled with 10,000 doses of LSD.
"It took the entire Soviet state to do Sputnik in 1957," says Green. "For some yahoo from Brooklyn to do the same thing 40 years later is to redefine our understanding of the individual." So it's entirely appropriate that when "Gregnik" launches, it won't broadcast military beeping noises but will send a track of canned laughter out across the planet.
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Gregnik
