The International Astronautical Congress Exhibition was held inside halls 5 through to 3 of the Scottish Exhibition Centre. That's three huge halls that had been opened up to allow 79 exhibition stands, plus three food concession areas, three specialist lounges, an Internet cafe, a press office, a presentation theatre, and a NASA lounge area running an ISS animation when it wasn't being used for other stuff. This is just the Exhibition area. The rest of the Scottish Exhibition Centre has 12 lecture rooms plus the Armadillo Lecture Center, all of which were used throughout the IAC by the delegates themselves. This is quite a big and popular event that reached the dizzying hights of 3,000 delegates where the British Interplanetary Society (who were hosting this year's event) were hoping for around 2,000. A success in attendance numbers.

I would type out a list of the exhibiting companies but you'd all lose the will to live and I'd end up in wrist splits for a while. Meanwhile, the following link will take you to the International Astronautical Federation website that will give you a calendar of events. You can also Google a PDF of the official programme - search for IAC Call for Papers (PDF).

The British Interplanetary Society invited the IAAA to run a gallery of art for the congress and they had a temporary gallery built specifically for us by their own team. It was magnificent. The best I've ever seen for a temporary construction. It had three walls that were braced overhead with beams (the beams were also used for the spot lighting) that were then connected to a small island room that was lockable and used for storage, whilst the outside walls of that room were used as additional hanging space. Everything was painted white and we even had carpets. How cool is all that? I recon that the cost of this construct had to have been between £5,000-£8,000. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.

The downside (yes, there is always at least one) was where the gallery was located...right at the end of Hall 3, outside of any normal foot traffic and with a psychological barrier between it and the main exhibitors: what they call the Interactive Zone which was two large islands of poster stands where delegates were encouraged to post their latest findings/calculations/pet projects. Terry and I spent most of the morning of Day 2 scrounging notice boards and placing them at strategic points in and around the Exhibition Halls with photocopied signs reminding everyone to visit the space art gallery. The signs did work as we had quite a few delegates hunting us out, intrigued to see an art show where they hadn't expected to find one.

On Sunday, the day after we arrived, we unpacked the artwork and hung the exhibition. As mentioned in a previous email, some of the artwork had been packed by their owners to withstand a bomb, with the result that not much of their packing survived after we'd peeled it off to get the artwork out. Good job we brought spare packaging with us. Only one artist packed with unpacking and repacking in mind. I think that an article in PULSAR is now in order for sometime in the future.

Present to hang the exhibition were Ed Buckley, Sean Brady, Dave Hardy, myself, and Terry (my husband). I have been involved with hanging exhibitions that have been painful, protracted, and problematic. This exhibition wasn't one of them. It was an absolute joy to be involved. The delegation of tasks sort of evolved into place with everyone doing their bit without getting in the way or being prissy about what they did. And we were going so well we even stopped for lunch!

Day 1 of the Congress, Mon. 29th September

The morning was somewhat quiet as all of the delegates were involved in the official Opening Ceremony. However, around 11.30 am, one lone individual, sporting a suit and a brifecase, made a direct bee-line for us and demanded to know if any of us were digital artists specialising in video work, but before I could answer him he checked his watch and charged off again, shouting behind him that he'd be back the next day.

The afternoon passed by almost as quietly, I counted about 40 visitors the entire day. We had a couple of other notable visits that day- one very enthusiastic young lady called Victoria Hudson, Vice Chair of UKSEDS (Students for the Exploration & Development of Space - http://seds.org/). When I say enthusiastic, I'm not exaggerating because she lives and breathes space and she is a natural for networking. She visited every single exhibition stand during the week, chatting away like there was no tomorrow. I'm sure I'll hear of her again sometime in the future. UKSEDS is holding their national conference in Southampton next month.

Then there was Maynooth professor Susan McKenna-Lawlor, who set up and runs Space Technology Ireland Limited (Stil). McKenna-Lawlor has been involved in the ESA's Giotto mission to Halley's Comet, the Soho, Cluster and Rosetta satellites and the Japanese Geotail mission. Her current project is to design and construct and advanced energetic particle monitor for NASA's flagship gravity probe mission. She was very interested in the digital artwork we had on show and took away with her one of our brochures.

Day 2 of the Congress, Tues. 30th September

Paul Shuch of SETI came to look the art over and to talk to us.

Tibor Pacher is a Hungerian physicist living in Germany with a passion for spaceflight and the quest for extraterrestrial life. He's so keen he's started up a on-line community of like-minded enthusiasts and wants to extend it into a public outreach. He has Betsy Smith's image that was taken on board the Mir space station on his Arts Gallery page. The website is a work in progess at the moment, but he would like anyone to take a look. He'd particularly like a dialogue with anyone who is willing to "share the dream" and help him take it forward by coming on board.

A delegate from the Singapore Space and Technology Association came over specifically to ask if the IAAA would assist her association in judging a space art competition that they're organising for next year. She also wanted to know if we would be interesting in exhibiting in Singapore and I told her about our travelling art. I will be emailing our president directly with the details.

Another delegate, Mr. O'Neil came over to view our work and paid me a most handsome compliment: "It has been the most enjoyable 15 minutes I've spent at this congress so far, listening to you talking about the paintings as we've walked around the gallery." He explained that he hadn't realised the care and dedication that the IAAA artists take to ensure that scientific details are as correct as we can make it in our work. He honestly believed that we worked entirely from imagination and not much else. He even mentioned the art exhibition and our work at the end of his lecture on environmental satellites, and used a quote from me: "The fear outweighs the wonder." in a section on public perception of environmental difficulties.

The delegate who visited the gallery at a run the day before returned and made a very specific request for a UK digital artist who could do a 30 second launch animation for a UK government project in 6 months time. I made a point of telling him that I would supply him with a list of all our artists who had those skills for him to choose from. I'll send out an email to the listserve tomorrow.

Dave spoke with a Dutch delegate who is hoping to set up a European space art exhibition, in particular featuring Russian artists as well as other European countries.

We had quite a few other visitors on Day 2, all of them were spoken to by either myself or Ed, Sean, or Dave. I had half a box full of IAAA brochures left over from when I was European Vice President which have been very useful on this occasion as a very impressive form of advertising. I feel that we should up-date it and then print off some more for future use. Everyone who got a copy (and we in no way passed them out willy-nilly as I didn't have enough of them to go round) was very impressed and I'm hoping that they will help to keep the IAAA in the forefront of their minds.

Day 3 of the Congress, Wed. 31st September

This was Press Day and our gallery was visited, photographed, and filmed by about 6 or 7 press guys. Romy Blott from Springer books came round for a visit and was so impressed that she sent her boss, Maury Solomon, over as well. Maury bought two prints from John kaufman.

At the end of Day 3 the public was allowed in for the final couple of hours so we all girded our loins, ready for the onslaught. We did have a minor flurry of extra activity, but the main surprise of the afternoon was when Art Dura turned up with his Russian counterpart, Elena Perepekina. He had been whining and dining his way through the main exhibition hall for most of that day and had ended up with us - and I believe we were as much of a surprise for him. Dave Hardy made him very welcome. I ended up chatting with his Russian friend, Elena. She gave me their business card which showed that Art has three new business addresses, two in Russia and one in the Isle of Man (UK), which may explain why the IAAA has been having trouble getting in touch with Art over the past year or so (Art is a US lawyer specialising in art law and has very kindly deal with a few problems for us in the past). Elena explained that Art has been busily purchasing Russian space art over the past few months.

Day 4 of the Congress, Thurs. 1st October

This was Public Day, open to all. Louis D. Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, dropped by to have a tour and a brief chat with us.

I had an interesting discussion with an exhibition employee who had come along to see the art in his break. His son is studying degree level chemistry and art at Glasgow University, so the father was planning on phoning his son to come along to the exhibition with a few of his class-mates.

We found out, at the very last minute, that one of the delegates (Sanket Nayak, University of Southern California) was due to give a talk on space art: "Space Art - History, Perspective and Relevance in Astronautics Curriculum" A Study of Space Exploration Concept Synthesis Studio at University of Southern California. As we were not delegates we would not have been allowed to attend in any event. Anyone know anything about him?

Richard Clar, who founded Art Technologies, came around for a look and a brief chat.

Colin & Mrs. Pillanger (of Beagle2 fame) turned up mid afternoon. He was very chatty. Especially as he had a book to sell ("Space is a Funny Thing"). He's invited me to the Private View of his exhibition of Space related cartoons at Duxford Museum (UK) sometime in March next year. I'm thinking that there's an IAAA get together or mini workshop that I can tie up with that Private View so I'll pursue it as far as I can.

Day 5 of the Congress, Fri. 2nd October

The final day. Well, half a day actually for us as the exhibition halls closed down at noon, although the rest of the congress carried on until around 5pm. We had all been invited to the British Interplanetary Society's reception, so we locked up the gallery and came back from the reception a couple of hours later in order to break down our gallery. We had just got all the paintings down off the walls when a couple of workman turned up ready to dismantle the gallery so I had to chase them off. There was no way that we could wrap artwork with wood splintering all around us. It was a little unnerving to have to rush to get everything packed up and loaded away so quickly - the exhibition workers were dismantling everything around us at what appeared to be the speed of light.

Five days of good, solid work which I feel will eventually yield several avenues of work or publicity for the IAAA and its members. Well worth the effort.

And speaking of effort, full praise goes to Sean Brady and Ed Buckley for their unstinting efforts. What teamwork! I can't thank them enough for all their hard work and enthusiasm.

Jackie E. Burns