Newswise — SANTA FE, New Mexico – June 7-8, 2018, the first annual InterPlanetary Festival will render Santa Fe’s Railyard district a platform for imagining future human civilizations, on and beyond Earth.

Speakers at the festival will include luminaries such as Seamus Blackley, a designer of Microsoft’s Xbox; Cory Doctorow, editor of Boing Boing; Ashton Eaton, Olympic gold medalist and aspiring Mars colonist; Annalee Newitz, tech culture editor at Ars Technica; Martine Rothblatt, founder of Sirius Satellite Radio and of biotech company United Therapeutics; Neal Stephenson, author and futurist; and Pete Worden who chairs the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. They will join complexity scientists and space enthusiasts for two days of thought-provoking discussions on the complex life support systems essential to sustaining interplanetary civilization.

In addition to free and accessible science talks and panels, the festival will feature outdoor musical performances by artist JiHAE, Santa Fe funk band The Sticky, theremin virtuoso Rob Schwimmer, musician and podcaster Michael Garfield, and Los Angeles-based multi-genre group Ozomatli.

Theaters and arts businesses in the Railyard district will host space-themed events during the festival. The Jean Cocteau Cinema will screen movies like "Forbidden Planet" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day;” SITE Santa Fe will be showing select episodes from Carl Sagan’s original "Cosmos" series; and the Violet Crown, will offer space-themed beers to accompany a screening of "The Fifth Element," to be introduced by Scott Ross, who created the film’s visual effects.

The InterPlanetary Festival is part of the Santa Fe Institute’s ongoing InterPlanetary Project, which aims to bring complexity science to everyone, everywhere, in an exciting, engaging, and experiential way. Those unable to attend in person will be able to watch livestreamed talks and discussions from the Santa Fe Institute’s youtube channel.

 

Updates and further information on the InterPlanetary Festival are available at interplanetaryfest.org

 

The InterPlanetary Festival is part of Futurition | Santa Fe — a month-long series of festivals and events that brings art, science, and technology together. Taking place from June 7-24, 2018, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, most programs and events, designed for every age, take place in Santa Fe’s Railyard District and are free to the public. Please visit santafefuturition.com for more information. Futurition|Santa Fe is a joint initiative of the Santa Fe Institute, Currents New Media, the Thoma Foundation, form & concept, Meow Wolf, Axle Contemporary and the Santa Fe Railyard.

 

About the Santa Fe Institute

The Santa Fe Institute is an independent research center exploring the frontiers of complex systems science. Operated as a nonprofit in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we work with a global network of scholars to study and understand shared patterns across complex physical, biological, social and cultural systems.