Pitch

Peer into a world only a handful of people have seen in history. Our project “Space Walk” aims to mesmerize viewers with aptly warped projections of heavenly bodies onto a spherical medium. “Space Walk” isn’t just art, it’s inspiration for a generation that has the opportunity to see what we project from space with their own eyes.

Photo

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Cultural Concept

The key cultural concepts that we are focusing on when making our project are reflecting human experience and inspiring wonder and awe. The project is titled “Space Walk” to put emphasis on the fact that our globe is the way that astronauts would view heavenly bodies from space. We hope to inspire wonder, awe, and interest in space and science in general by creating something that represents what there is to see in the universe in an accessible and visually appealing way.

Relevant Citation:

  • “All‐sky satellite data assimilation at operational weather forecasting centres” - Geer - 2018 - Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society - Wiley Online Library

Artistic Merit

One relevant art piece to describe the artistic merit of our project is Galileo’s original “Drawings of the Moon” (November-December 1609). This art represents a huge leap in human knowledge and represents the first time anyone had ever realistically depicted the moon in history. While the art itself is pretty good, it is the principle of its creation, the immersiveness and realism, and what it represents that is important. Our project aims to capture a similar immersive element these had by making the medium even more accessible.

Another relevant art pieces (or more aptly set of art pieces) would be “The Trouvot Astronomical Drawings”, by Etienne Trouvot published in 1882. The quality of his art was immediately recognized by the scientific community. It serves as an inspiration for us while we conceptualize the overall vision of the project.

Technology Behind the Project

The technology we will be using involves projectors that will display moving images of the earth moving at its axis and while the other side of the weather balloon displays the night side of the earth. The earth projection will have clouds, nighttime lights, and other overlays to give a more realistic view of earth. We will probably be using python and data packs to create the layers of data and weather patterns. This will all be done in a dark room with the projector as the sun and the weather balloon being earth that is receiving the daylight.

Relevant Citations:

  • “Practices of Projection: Histories and Technologies” - Google Books

Exhibition Planning

We are planning to exhibit our project on the Memorial Union quad. We have already started the conversation with the university administration to secure this space for our exhibition.

Current Status:

  • We have requested the space via email and are awaiting confirmation.
  • Planning to exhibit in this public space because it is accessible and likely to attract a diverse audience.

Evaluation Plans

  • Does the final projection resemble earth?
    • At the moment there is only a demo image for earth, but it still would look fairly similar.
  • Is the final project reflective of various perspectives we can have on earth as a whole?
    • At the moment not many perspectives have been developed, but soon we do plan to.
  • Does the project incorporate earth data in an interesting way?
    • Yes, displaying it in a three-dimensional manner makes the medium more immersive and interesting to people than simply reading or viewing it in two dimensions.
  • Are we able to learn any new insights with this project of earth?
    • We were able to learn more about earth’s curvature and how difficult it really is to represent a spherical object with 2 dimensions.
  • Did we learn how to use new creative tools such as unity?
    • The team learned TouchDesigner and various aspects of image manipulation, so yes.
  • Would we be able to replicate this project again faster and more easily?

    • Yes, we have more experience with the program now, and replicating it would not take very long with the skills we now have.