S.H.R.O.O.M. (Sustainable Hybrid Rocket Optimization with Organic Materials)
Opening Event
November 7, 2024
6:30 – 9 PM
LAND HQ
Rocket Launch
Details forthcoming
Friends of Amateur Rocketry (FAR)
Randsburg, California
About the Project
Daid Roy, whose practice draws from the world of amateur rocketry, has researched and developed a mycelium-based, organic rocket propellant in collaboration with artist and mycologist Sam Shoemaker.
Roy’s artistic practice often takes the form of functional, high-powered model rockets, which the artist constructs, presents as artworks, and launches. The launch of Horus III, on December 7, will be the artist’s highest performing rocket built to date, and one propelled by sustainable, organic combustible materials. This multidisciplinary project reorients the education and dissemination of information regarding space exploration, rocketry, and technology towards peaceful aims. Roy’s recent interest in developing organic rocket fuels is forward thinking and experimental; they envision a future where interplanetary travel is made possible through the growth of mycelial fuels grown and processed aboard spacecrafts that theoretically could travel indefinitely.
In 2016, Roy began the BLACKNASA project, which aims to “reclaim the power of technology as a tool for good–rockets for peaceful purposes only.” BLACKNASA’s mission statement is as follows: “To conduct rocket science, both technical and social; To promote the Seven Noble Ideals of Human Space Exploration: Creativity, Challenge, Courage, Ingenuity, Perseverance, Unity, and Discovery”. Under the aegis of BLACKNASA, Roy also composes experimental music, and holds educational workshops.
Events
Opening Event
LAND invites you to a lecture, performance, and exhibition opening on November 7 at the LAND HQ to celebrate the launch of 2024 MOHN Grant artist Daid Roy’s project S.H.R.O.O.M. (Sustainable Hybrid Rocket Optimization with Organic Materials). Artist and mycologist Sam Shoemaker will deliver a presentation on the conceptualization and development of the mycelium-based rocket propellant, which will be followed by musical sets by Pablo Perez, Michael James Gross, and ézili jean. In addition, an exhibition of drawings, videos, and sculptures related to the development of S.H.R.O.O.M. will be on display.
Rocket Launch
This project will culminate in the launch of the Horus III, a mycelium-fueled rocket at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry site in Randsburg, California on December 7, 2024.
About the Artists
Daid Roy a.k.a. Daid Puppypaws (b. 1986, Los Angeles, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working in sculpture, photography, video, music, technology, and performance. Roy is guided by the belief that art is a practice of freedom that should never be estranged from everyday life. Indeed, their practice is often difficult to distinguish from the kinds of labor we associate with that of a scientist, researcher, hobbyist, or even auto mechanic.
Sam Shoemaker is an interdisciplinary artist and mycologist making work inspired by ecosystems, radical pedagogy, and architectural and environmental psychology—by facilitating ongoing collaborations with rare, native, and medicinal fungi. Drawn to responsive and relational objects that behave, react, change, grow, and carry rhythm, Shoemaker collects and propagates mushrooms, manipulating them in a highly controlled environment of his design. Pairing reishi mushrooms with hand-built ceramic and blown glass vessels, Shoemaker has developed a unique substrate matter, which he embeds within each sculpture enabling reishi to grow for several months. Comparable to long exposure photography, Shoemaker carefully moves LED lights or the reishi themselves, adjusts the temperature, or changes the saturation of CO2—in order to choreograph growth. Archiving reishi reactions to environmental change, Shoemaker captures good moods, tantrums, or other unanticipated expressions of mushroom fruiting body language.
Pablo Perez is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles, specializing in sound synthesis and repurposed noise. His work explores the transformation of sound, composing audio into innovative and unconventional forms.
South Florida-born ézili jean, now based in LA, is a poet, sound selector, and has roots as a cultural organizer. Balancing vinyl and digital, she blends experimental jazz, post-punk, electronic music, and further body-bending rhythms that defy genres. ézili jean’s monthly radio show, “Port Elsewhere,” airs on Bedcrumb Radio every third Sunday, continuing her ever-evolving musical explorations.
Michael James Gross is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Los Angeles, CA. Through sculpture, performance, sound, and painting, Gross explores the phenomena that physically form our relationship to one another. Gross’ project is to gather the traces and artifacts of occurrences–be they mundane or monumental–and re-present them through new and distinct mediums. In the process of translation, traces of physical contact pass over into signs that trouble the very connection they seem to require.
Daid Roy: S.H.R.O.O.M (Sustainable Hybrid Rocket Optimization with Organic Materials) is organized by Bryan Barcena and Irina Gusin, LAND curators-at-large.
This project is funded through the Mohn LAND Grants established by Pamela and Jarl Mohn. The initiative provides Los Angeles-based artists resources and support to present site-responsive, transdisciplinary work across Los Angeles County.
LAND’s 2024 exhibitions are made possible with lead support from the Offield Family Foundation, the Jerry and Terri Kohl Family Foundation, and The Perenchio Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Fran and Ray Stark Foundation, Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture, the LA Arts Recovery Fund, Brenda Potter, LAND’s Nomadic Council. Special thanks to Artist Sponsors Karen Hillenburg, Liana Krupp, and Ben Weyerhaeuser.
LAND is a member of and supported by the Los Angeles Visual Arts (LAVA) Coalition.
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