The art group Inploration collaborated with the MIT Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and MIT Architecture to build a mission control station at the MIT Media Lab to track MIT’s three lunar payloads. This installation makes space exploration more accessible to the public, by witnessing live lunar operations. The exhibit consists of several elements: a cinematic exploration of humanity’s relationship with space by Inploration, woven from the voices of 55 artists, scientists and visionaries. The Lunar Mission Control Model Build, a process video highlighting the collaboration between Inploration and MIT SEI, and the Lunar Mission Control Model of the full-compression structure built at MIT Media Lab with an Owens Corning FOAMGLAS® Sample of its construction material.
Detailed overview of the main elements of the exhibit:
Inploration, 2025 is a cinematic exploration of humanity’s relationship with space, woven from the voices of 55 artists, scientists, and visionaries. Originally set against the backdrop of the Lunar Mission Control installation—created in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) —the film captures profound reflections from luminaries such as Lita Albuquerque, Nancy Baker Cahill, Cai Guo-Qiang, Dava Newman, and others. Through their words, drawn from their work and lived experiences, Inploration, 2025 reveals the intricate intersections of art and science, offering a compelling perspective on how we navigate and interpret the cosmos.
Inploration and Macroscopic: Lawrence Azerrad, Richelle Ellis, Tiffany Pitoun and Sarah Kraft
Inploration, 2025
Duration: 04:44 minutes
Lunar Mission Control Model Build, 2025 is a process video highlighting the collaboration between Inploration and the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. Inploration provided design expertise for the Lunar Mission Control, which was built by MIT Architecture using foamed glass and basalt materials. The structure, shaped like a dome, allows visitors to experience live lunar operations and interact with artistic projections. On February 26, three MIT research payloads were launched to the moon aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. After reaching the moon, the payloads were deployed on a Lunar Outpost MAPP rover at the moon’s south pole.
Model and FOAMGLAS material sample.
Inploration: Lawrence Azerrad, Richelle Ellis, Tiffany Pitoun and Sarah Kraft and MIT Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and MIT Architecture
Lunar Mission Control Model Build, 2025
Duration: 01:09 minutes
Lunar Mission Control Model, 2025 is a full-compression structure. This model examines the ways foamed glass, basalt, and rock, often used only in industrial settings, can be revisited to produce lightweight, load-bearing, fully insulated structures that are made from local geological strata, from lunar to earthly environments.
Inploration, MIT Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and MIT Architecture
Lunar Mission Control Model, 2025
3D-printing material, polylactic acid (PLA)
60.9 cm x 60.9 cm (24 in x 24 in.)
Owens Corning FOAMGLAS® Sample, 2025
Thermal insulation made of cellular glass
18 cm x 19 cm x 46 cm (7 in. x 7 ½ in. x 18 in.)
Inploration exists to channel the human fascination with the cosmos towards social and environmental change. By bridging art, science, education, futures literacy, and design, we use the power of space to inspire our best on Earth, now.
The Inploration team consists of Lawrence Azzerad, Richelle Ellis, Sarah Kraft and Tiffany Pitoun.
Lawrence Azerrad is the Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Macroscopic. With a decades-long career as a creative director, author, and design innovation thought leader, Lawrence specializes in creative strategy incubation and executions rooted in transformational design and future-thinking across digital, tangible, and experiential realms.
Across his many endeavors, all of Lawrence’s work shares a central undercurrent: the unrelenting belief in design as a means to elevate humanity and expand the frontier of possibility. At his previous firm, LADdesign, Lawrence worked with esteemed musical artists such as The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Esperanza Spalding, and Wilco (GRAMMY, Ode to Joy) to create intricate visual worlds and develop go-to-market strategies that mobilized the artists’ fan bases in fresh ways. Additionally, he received a GRAMMY in partnership with Ozma Records for his work on The Voyager Golden Record. A momentous endeavor, Lawrence was responsible for spearheading collaboration between members of the original Voyager Golden Record team, The Sagan Institute at Cornell University, and NASA’s JPL to release the record here on Earth.
Lawrence is also a trusted go-to for elite educational and cultural institutions ready to visualize the future, and has worked with USC, UCLA, Berklee College of Music, The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, The Cooper Hewitt Museum, and more. He founded “Designing the Future of Music,” an academic initiative sponsored in-part by Google, which launched postgraduate design education programs at the Royal College of Art, the Imperial College of London, and California College of the Arts. Complementing this effort, Lawrence led the curation of “The Future Happened: Designing The Future of Music,” a speculative design and music exhibition with The Museum of Design Atlanta. He has also spoken on design and inspiration at The V&A Museum, London, at TEDxUCLA, and at universities and professional organizations around the globe, and is the author of both Supersonic: The Design and Lifestyle of Concorde (Prestel, 2018), and Mirror Sound, A Look into the People and Processes Behind Self-Recorded Music (Prestel, 2020), co-authored by Spencer Tweedy.
Richelle Ellis is an expeditionary artist, curator, and analog astronaut. Her art and research aims to use space to help life on Earth, to see the world – and ourselves – in new ways. Richelle creates artworks made for international orbit, etched on satellites, suspended by Stratollite balloons and aboard rockets, and is one of the first women to have art on the surface of the Moon.
As the Head of Creative Research for analog space missions via Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), Sensoria Program, Lunares Research Station, and Astroland Interplanetary Agency, Ellis examines creativity beyond our world. Richelle’s artistic ventures have taken her to glaciers near the North Pole to parabolic flights in zero gravity, into the Biosphere 2 and Analog Mars Missions with NASA Goddard, earning her accolades and residencies at renowned institutions such as Planet, Google Quantum AI, Relativity and the Karman Project. Her artwork spans exhibitions from the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Hamburg Planetarium, and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Richelle is the Founding Director of Supercollider, which brings together leading artists, scientists, and the public to celebrate the future and reframe the challenges facing our world. She is also the Co-Founder and Director of Space Programs for Beyond Earth, an all-female international transdisciplinary artist collective exploring the frontiers of art, space, and biology through space-bound artworks.
Sarah Kraft is a Design Strategist and Creative Operations lead at Inploration and Macroscopic. She specializes in conceptual research, editorial and design production, aligning creative direction with purpose while developing innovative solutions. By blending technical expertise and research with compelling storytelling across both digital and physical spaces, she advances Inploration’s mission with clarity and organization, ensuring that creative solutions authentically align with its values. Sarah is committed to thoughtful, collaborative approaches that drive meaningful impact and help shape a more connected, inspired world.
Tiffany Pitoun is the Managing Director for Inploration. Tiffany has 19 years of extensive experience in the arts and philanthropy sectors. She is the former West Coast Director of Development for the American Friends of the Israel Museum. In this capacity, she forged significant relationships with high level donors and internationally recognized artists, while also spearheading unique arts programming initiatives. Prior to her role at AFIM, Tiffany spent 9 years at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as Department Manager for Modern Art. There, she managed the strategic operations of 24 major exhibitions, drawing over a million visitors. Tiffany has also worked at the Hammer Museum and the Getty Research Institute.
Inploration is a Platinum Partner of the Universe Pavilion.
