How I Craft Sci-Fi Sculptures That Imagine Exoplanetary Fossils, Alien Pottery, and Lost Technologies From Distant Worlds
There’s something endlessly fascinating about the intersection of science fiction, technology, and art. For years, I’ve explored this intersection through sculpture — creating imagined relics of civilizations that may have once thrived light-years away, long before our species ever pointed a telescope at the sky.
My sculptures are not just objects; they are fragments of an invented universe where the lines between organic life, artificial intelligence, and interstellar myth blur into one.
I create these pieces digitally — sculpting in Cinema 4D (C4D), though I first learned the ropes in 3ds Max. But that’s where the technical talk ends. My true inspiration is rooted not in the software I use but in my lifelong curiosity about space — not astronomy in the traditional sense, but rather the artistic potential of what might exist beyond our reach.
My work exists within a speculative world I’ve been building, where humanity has ventured far enough into the galaxy to encounter the remains of alien life — fossils, artifacts, fragments of unknown technologies. These discoveries become the foundation for three distinct bodies of work that define my artistic exploration: Galactic Fossils, Galactic Pottery, and Tiny Galactic Fossils. Each series reflects my desire to explore universal questions about life, extinction, beauty, and the human impulse to assign meaning to the unknown.
Galactic Fossils: Imagined Relics of Extinct Civilizations
The first group — Galactic Fossils — is perhaps the heart of my artistic universe. The term itself is a playful misdirection. In scientific terms, “galactic fossils” refer to ancient galaxies or primordial clouds of gas — remnants from the early days of the cosmos. But in my world, Galactic Fossils are something very different: they are the imagined skeletons of extinct extraterrestrial species, discovered on faraway exoplanets in the distant future.
When I sculpt a Galactic Fossil, I envision a team of future explorers — humans or perhaps AI archeologists — uncovering these strange remains on a forgotten planet orbiting a distant star. What kind of life once thrived there? What led to its extinction? My sculptures don’t provide clear answers — instead, they invite viewers to ask their own questions, filling in the gaps with their imagination.
Each fossil is designed with a balance of the familiar and the alien. You might recognize a vertebrae-like hints, or a crustacea-like formation, or an intricatly shaped skull — yet none of it is clearly identifiable. These shapes evoke prehistoric creatures, insects, or deep-sea life, yet their forms are skewed by the harsh conditions of a planet we cannot know. The result is both unsettling and beautiful — a quiet reflection on mortality, evolution, and the unknowable scope of life in the universe.
Many of my Galactic Fossils are created with laser-cut steel, bringing the digital forms into the real world as heavy, cold objects. Steel — a material born from Earth’s own technological progress — becomes the perfect medium to embody these alien relics. It creates a tension between the organic curves of the forms and the industrial nature of the material, enhancing the sculptures’ otherworldly aesthetic.
Galactic Pottery: Reimagining the Vessel in the Vastness of Space
While Galactic Fossils explore extinction and the fragility of life in the entire Universe, my Galactic Pottery series shifts focus to survival — specifically, the instinct to store, protect, and carry substances essential for life anywhere in the Cosmos. The concept is simple: what would pottery look like if it were invented in Space on a distant Exoplanet?
The term Galactic Pottery may sound abstract, but it represents a fusion of two powerful ideas. Galactic signals the vast, unknown territories of the universe. Pottery — one of the oldest human crafts — symbolizes utility, ritual, and timeless beauty. Together, they allow me to explore how vessels might evolve in a zero-gravity environment where form must follow very different functions.
In this series, I play with the visual possibilities of storing liquids or unknown substances in space. What kind of containers would future civilizations design for a place without gravity? Would their forms be purely functional, or would aesthetics survive the journey through the stars?
To ground these speculative designs, I borrow heavily from classical pottery — Greek amphorae, Roman vases, and ancient ceremonial vessels. There is something eternal about these shapes, something universally human. By reimagining them in a galactic context, I aim to create a bridge between the ancient and the futuristic — a reminder that even as we push into the unknown, we carry with us echoes of our past.
In many ways, Galactic Pottery is my most poetic work. It asks: what do we choose to carry with us, across time and space? What objects survive, and why? Is it possible that, in some distant future, another species might stumble upon these vessels and wonder who made them — just as we do today with artifacts from Earth’s earliest civilizations?
Tiny Galactic Fossils – Depicting Exoplanetary Fossils, Enigmatic Pottery, and Technology in Space
The third group — Tiny Galactic Fossils — is perhaps the most intimate and eerie corner of my universe. These sculptures draw inspiration from the small and often overlooked creatures of our own world: insects, crustaceans, and the fragile beauty of things that scuttle, crawl, and buzz around us.
But in my imagined world, these tiny creatures are not terrestrial. They are alien, yet strangely familiar. Some resemble the segmented bodies of trilobites or the delicate wings of dragonflies, while others seem part biological, part machine — tiny hybrids of robot and bug.
There’s a certain creepiness to these pieces, a sense of unease that comes from their scale and the uncanny mixture of life and technology. Yet, I find them curiously beautiful. There is something captivating about imagining these small creatures as the first to be fossilized, their delicate forms preserved in alien rock for millions of years — waiting to be discovered by future explorers.
One of my Tiny Galactic Fossils even depicts what could be a fragment of a larger Galactic Fossil, shown in full anatomical detail. In this way, the tiny fossils connect back to the broader narrative of my universe — they are microcosms of the larger story, fragments of a forgotten world meticulously reconstructed in miniature.
Sculpting the Unknown: Why This Work Matters
At its core, my work is driven by the human desire to understand the unknown — to imagine what life might exist (or have once existed) beyond our fragile blue planet. In creating this universe of fossils, vessels, and alien creatures, I’m not just building sculptures. I’m building a mythology — a speculative archaeology of worlds that could be, or could have been.
Each piece invites the viewer to slow down and wonder: what stories lie behind these forms? What civilizations rose and fell in the vast darkness of space? Could we, one day, be reduced to similar artifacts — strange fossils discovered by explorers from another galaxy?
There’s a quiet, melancholic beauty in this thought. But there’s also hope — hope that art, creativity, and curiosity will always drive us forward. That no matter how far we travel, or how strange the future becomes, we will continue to create, to question, and to imagine.
If my work speaks to anything, it’s this: the universe is vast, but so is our capacity for imagination. Somewhere between science, fiction, and art, there’s a place where we can explore what it means to be alive — here, now, and in whatever futures we dare to dream.
Interested in seeing these sculptures?
Visit my gallery to explore the full collection of Galactic Fossils, Galactic Pottery, and Tiny Galactic Fossils. Each piece is a fragment of a universe waiting to be discovered — and perhaps, to inspire your own imaginings of life beyond the stars.
Peter Hauerland
Explore my science fiction-inspired sculptures and creations here:
