The Story of the Earth

The Story of the Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth’s past, characterized by constant geological change and biological evolution.

O’Neill cylinder

O’Neill was inspired by the papers written by his students. He began to work out the details of a program to build self-supporting space habitats in free space.Among the details was how to provide the inhabitants of a space colony with an Earth-like environment. His students had designed giant pressurized structures, spun up to approximate Earth gravity by centrifugal force . With the population of the colony living on the inner surface of a sphere or cylinder, these structures resembled “inside-out planets”. He found that pairing counter-rotating cylinders would eliminate the need to spin them using rockets.This configuration has since been known as the O’Neill cylinder.

parallaxis
In a new moving-image work by Melbourne-based artist and architect Matthew Bird, two bodies move across the land, working with large cylindrical instruments. We witness them map and survey a terrain analogous to universal physical and psychological locations, each revolution marking a paradoxical attempt to pin an earthly position through perpetual movement. Playing on the human need to understand our relationship to the people and places around us, Parallaxis considers the potential for architectural processes and measurements to act as a foundation for structures of understanding.

Anarchitecture

splitting house

“Of the many shows at the fabled 112 Greene Street gallery—an artistic epicenter of New York’s downtown scene in the 1970s—the Anarchitecture group show of March 1974 has been the subject of the most enduring discussion, despite a complete lack of documentation about it. Anarchitecture has become a foundational myth, but one that remains to be properly understood. Stemming from a series of meetings organized by Gordon Matta-Clark and reflecting his long-standing interest in architecture, the Anarchitecture exhibition was conceived as an anonymous group statement in photographs about the intersection of art and building. But did it actually happen? It exists only through oblique archival traces and the memories of the participants. Cutting Matta-Clark investigates the Anarchitecture group as a kind of collective research seminar, through extensive interviews with the protagonists and a dossier of all the available evidence. The dossier includes a collection of Matta-Clark’s aphoristic “art cards,” the 96 photographs that were produced by the various participants for possible inclusion in the exhibition, and images from a recently unearthed video of Matta-Clark’s now famous bus trip to see Splitting in Englewood, New Jersey.” Mark Wigley

TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time
We start in 2019 and travel exponentially through time, witnessing the future of Earth, the death of the sun, the end of all stars, proton decay, zombie galaxies, possible future civilizations, exploding black holes, the effects of dark energy, alternate universes, the final fate of the cosmos.

Valla claimed to have collected a series of 60 “surrealistic” images, or that, at least, give that impression, during a long period “playing” in Google Earth.“The images are a kind of mirrors for a fun house.They are strange illusions and reflections of the real ”Despite the strong distortions, which easily resemble a surrealist painting, the images of the work do not have any manipulation of tools like Photoshop, for example.”The images are screenshots of Earth with basic color adjustments”, “This is a construction of 3D maps on two-dimensional bases, creating these fabulous and unintended distortions”.

waterlicht

Dubbed “the northern light of the Netherlands” by Studio Roosegaarde, the Waterlicht installation is designed to create the impression of a “virtual flood”.The waving lines of light spread across 1.6 hectares bear a resemblance to the northern lights – the natural phenomenon created when charged particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere – when viewed from underneath.

톰슨 & 크레이그 헤드
Belief
Belief is made from information found entirely on the worldwide web. In fifteen minutes, this two-screen installation presents a series of fragmented broadcasts about belief, all sourced from the video sharing community YouTube. A compass floor projection interacts with the montage showing where each clip originated in relation to the geographical location of the artwork. With a little help from Google Earth viewers are placed at the centre point of this cinematic data visualisation.

比尔•维奥拉
빌 비올라
ביל ויולה
ビル·ヴィオラ
БИЛЛ ВИОЛА
martyrs (earth, air, fire, water)
“As the work opens, four individuals are shown in stasis, a pause from their suffering. Gradually there is movement in each scene as an element of nature begins to disturb their stillness. Flames rain down, winds begin to lash, water cascades, and earth flies up. As the elements rage, each martyr’s resolve remains unchanged. In their most violent assault, the elements represent the darkest hour of the martyr’s passage through death into the light.”

Chijikinkutsu
“Chijikinkutsu” is a coinage, specially created for the title of this work by mingling two Japanese words: “Chijiki” and “Suikinkutsu”.”Chijiki” means geomagnetism: terrestrial magnetic properties that cannot be sensed by the human body but that exists everywhere on earth. Since long before the Age of Discovery, people have traveled with navigation using compasses employing geomagnetism. In recent years, various devises that utilize geomagnetism have even been incorporated into smartphones[…] “Suikinkutsu” is a sound installation for a Japanese traditional garden, invented in the Edo period. The sounds of water drops falling into an earthenware pot buried under a stone wash basin resonate through hollow bamboo utensils. The concept of the work “Chijikinkutsu” does not derive from experimentalism of science and technology on which media arts rely, nor from architectural theory of western music upon which some sound arts lay their foundation. While utilizing the action of geomagnetism normally treated as a subject of science, this sound installation expands the subtle sounds of “Suikinkutsu” in the context of Japanese perspective on Nature.

Internal view of the O’Neill cylinder
“One of my earliest Space Colony paintings was based on the giant ‘Model 3’ cylindrical habitats envisioned by Gerard O’Neill. I imagined the clouds forming at an ‘altitude‘ around the rotation axis. At this time the scene is bathed in the ruddy light of all the sunrises and sunsets on Earth at that moment as the colony briefly enters the Earths shadow, out at the L5 Lagrangian point where stable locations are easily maintained. Oil on canvas panel disposition unknown. “

Shorter than the Day
The New York-based artist captures the sky as it changes from cerulean blue morning to a colorful sunset to the many shades of night through nearly 1,000 photographs of the sky. Each printed image is fastened to the aluminum and steel with alligator clips and is revealed as viewers move around the massive work, just like the earth circles the sun to mark a day.

World of Glory
World of Glory is a 1991 Swedish short film written and directed by Roy Andersson. Its original Swedish title is Härlig är jorden, which means “Lovely is the Earth”, and is the Swedish title of the hymn “Fairest Lord Jesus”. The narrative portrays a man in white make-up who guides the viewer through his life in a bleakly stylised world. The film was Andersson’s critical comeback to cinema, after many years in advertising

SONNTAG aus LICHT

Sonntag aus Licht takes as its subject our solar system and the relationships of all the planets that orbit the sun. In this opera, the earth and life on it is represented as the result of the union of light and water. These two elements are presented in the first scene, and the rest of the opera celebrates the evolution of life, of plants, animals, humans, and above all this the planets, moons, and heavenly constellations. The opera has a pronounced ritualistic and meditative character, with very little that can be described as dramatic action.

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What exactly is METAMACHINE? The metaphor comes from the artistic path of Atsushi Koyama, one of the participating visual artists. While emphasising the aesthetic qualities of machines and mechanical drawings in oil paintings, Koyama merges the human body with mechanisms, creating a man-machine (similar to the notorious Tetsuo, but in a more sublimated way). As if to incorporate the beauty of the human body, Koyama’s mechanisms break away from their earthly nature. They take us to another reality, beyond utilitarian usage or function itself. Koyama’s machines act more like ‘mechanical’ (‘mechaaesthetical‘) keys to another dimension, existing outside of the physical reality and its laws.

Eco Warriors

A Beginner’s Guide for Eco Warriors is inspired by the current dramatic changes in Earth’s ecosystem due to the human impact, the so-called age of Anthropocene. This short film represent, with certain level of exaggeration, tips and inspirations how to lower your ecological footprint and contribute to the slowing down of global warming and the protection of natural habitats. This short film then becomes a small guide for Eco Warriors and urges for reflection and reaction from each of us.

Astronomical Bodies

Astronomical Bodies is based on the research of Dr. Terence Kee of the University of Leeds. He proposes that that a reactive form of phosphorus arrived on the early Earth via meteorite impacts. His research found that phosphorus from space was more suitable for the chemical reactions to develop complex life. Astronomical Bodies reverses this process and tries to transform phosphorus harvested from the body — in the form of kidney stones and urine — into manmade meteorites. Rather than the traditional idea of transpermia addressed in a host of science fiction writings and films, Astronomical Bodies proposes that the galactic transferal of life-promoting chemicals is a natural process that we can facilitate.

Cloud Core Scanner

Her current installation IN THE TROPOSPHERE LAB provides insights into the material produced under conditions distant from earth. The exhibition tells of the formation of clouds and shows conditions and combinations of art and science during zero gravity. With the exhibition by Agnes Meyer-Brandis, the project space of the Ernst Schering Foundation once again presents a contemporary art project that stimulates interdisciplinary debate and builds bridges to scientific research. The lab as a gravimetric document of the “Cloud Core Scanner” experiment shows a world alternating between controlled and bound-less states – artistic research in search of the reality level of constructions of the matter that surrounds us.

exosphere

The Exosphere has a diameter of 12 m (39’4″), weighs 4.5 tons, and relates to the Earth at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Its blue LED display indicates the geographic location of Wolfsburg, local temperature and time (supplied by the Atomic clock). It is positioned where Wolfsburg would be on this globe, assuming that the bottom of the globe is North and the vertical red display represents the position of the international dateline.

Field of Globes is a permanent installation of ninety World Processor globes. These spheres are readymade acrylic globes altered by the artist to visualize data on a variety of topics. This data comes from myriad sources, including the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and other organizations.

video

オラファー·エリアソン
اولافور الياسون
奥拉维尔·埃利亚松
אולאפור אליאסון
ОЛАФУР ЭЛИАССОН
earth perspectives
The earth as viewed from above the SouthPole, one of nine-part series
The pole is at the heart of the virtually uninhabited continent of Antarctica, a vital ice-covered wildlife haven that is under threat from rapid warming and ice loss.

МЯО СЯОЧУНЬ
缪晓春
مياو شياو تشون
The large-scale nine-panel installation, Microcosm, is based on Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th century masterpiece, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Microcosm is an imaginative reinvention of the sumptuous landscape of sin, salvation, and tawdry visions of those who never made it to paradise. The structure and narrative pattern of Bosch’s triptych, such as the architecture of heaven, earth and hell, as well as the basic forms of Bosch’s pictures, have been preserved in Miao Xiaochun’s work. But new digital means and computer technologies have allowed Miao Xiaochun to explore a contemporary visual vocabulary. He abolishes the traditional fixed single-point perspective aesthetic, instead favoring the Chinese tradition of multiple points of view in a single landscape.

Янис Ксенакис
ヤニス·クセナキス
ANTIKHTHON
In 1971, Iannis Xenakis composed a work called Antikhthon. Commissioned by Balanchine for the New York City Ballet, this overwhelming composition refers to a hypothetical planet, proposed in the 5th century BC. by the Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus. “Antichthon” is the name that the Greeks gave to a hypothetical celestial object, the Counter-Earth, located between the Earth and the center of the Universe to prevent man from looking directly at Zeus, who had his throne there.

Empyrean: In ancient cosmologies, the Empyrean Heaven, or simply the Empyrean, was the place in the highest heaven, which was supposed to be occupied by the element of fire (or aether in Aristotle’s natural philosophy). The word derives from the Medieval Latin empyreus, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek empyros (ἔμπυρος), meaning “in or on the fire (pyr)”

Empyreum  (The Divine Comedy, Gustave Doré )

The Empyrean was thus used as a name for the firmament, and in Christian literature for the dwelling-place of God, the blessed, celestial beings so divine they are made of pure light, and the source of light and creation. Notably, at the very end of Dante’s Paradiso, Dante visits God in the Empyrean.

Satyricon
Fellini Satyricon, or simply Satyricon, is a 1969 Italian fantasy drama film written and directed by Federico Fellini and loosely based on Petronius’s work Satyricon, written during the reign of Emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome. The film is divided into nine episodes, following Encolpius and his friend Ascyltus as they try to win the heart of a young boy named Gitón within a surreal and dream-like Roman landscape.
The film opens on a graffiti–covered wall with Encolpius lamenting the loss of his lover Gitón to Ascyltus. Vowing to win him back, he learns at the Thermae that Ascyltus sold Gitón to the actor Vernacchio. At the theatre, he discovers Vernacchio and Gitón performing in a lewd play based on the “emperor’s miracle”: a slave’s hand is axed off and replaced with a gold one. Encolpius storms the stage and reclaims Gitón. On their return to Encolpius’s home in the Insula Felicles, a Roman tenement building, they walk through the vast Roman brothel known as the Lupanare, observing numerous sensual scenes. They fall asleep after making love at Encolpius’s place. Ascyltus sneaks into the room, waking Encolpius with a whiplash. Since both share the tenement room, Encolpius proposes they divide up their property and separate. Ascyltus mockingly suggests they split Gitón in half. Encolpius is driven to suicidal despair, however, when Gitón decides to leave with Ascyltus. At that moment, an earthquake destroys the tenement.

Globe of Science and Innovation
History of the universe
Did you know that the matter in your body is billions of years old?

According to most astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe today — including the matter in people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies — was created at the very first moment of time, thought to be about 13 billion years ago.
The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists dubbed this titanic explosion the Big Bang.
The Big Bang was like no explosion you might witness on earth today. For instance, a hydrogen bomb explosion, whose center registers approximately 100 million degrees Celsius, moves through the air at about 300 meters per second. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a million times faster than the H-bomb) and estimate that the temperature of the entire universe was 1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the explosion. Even the cores of the hottest stars in today’s universe are much cooler than that.
There’s another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That’s because there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe.

Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art
This building proposal challenges the traditional definition of a museum and the conventional relationship between building and site. The ground floor of the building is reduced to a nominal footprint, enclosing only enough space for basic services, structure and ticketing functions. The ground plane is primarily reserved for exterior public space, including an art park, Hall of Fame, and garden walk. The bulk of the program and building mass are split by the open ground floor. Half of the building is coupled with the earth while the other half hovers in the air. The purpose is twofold; to minimize the damaging effects of extreme local weather by harnessing environmental flows toward productive outcomes and to re-conceptualize the identity of a modern art museum. The manicured roof plane of the below ground program is pocketed with water absorbing vegetation and catchment systems, while the hovering museum above expands to form open atriums, allowing diffuse light to brighten the space and passive airflow to comfortably condition the building.The program of the museum is interconnected. The Contemporary Museum of Art, Children’s Museum of Art and Administration are located within the floating mass. The lecture hall, parking, art resource center, library and classrooms are located below ground. The programs below ground are easily accessible and directly connected through vertical circulation tubes, providing both structural support for the floating mass above and space for movement systems, such as escalators, stairs and elevators between levels. All of the below ground programs are flooded with diffuse light passing through skylights that penetrate the landscape.

Клементу Валла
Postcards from Google Earth
Valla behauptete, eine Reihe von 60 “surrealistischen” Bildern gesammelt zu haben, oder die zumindest diesen Eindruck während eines langen “Spielens” in Google Earth erwecken. “Die Bilder sind eine Art Spiegel für ein lustiges Haus. Sie sind es.” seltsame Illusionen und Reflexionen des Realen “Trotz der starken Verzerrungen, die leicht einem surrealistischen Gemälde ähneln, können die Bilder der Arbeit keine Werkzeuge wie beispielsweise Photoshop manipulieren.” Die Bilder sind Screenshots der Erde mit grundlegenden Farbanpassungen. ” “Dies ist eine Konstruktion von 3D-Karten auf zweidimensionaler Basis, die diese fabelhaften und unbeabsichtigten Verzerrungen erzeugt.”

Requiem

In REQUIEM choreographer Nanine Linning imagines the tension between life and death, the profane and the sacred, the carnal and the spiritual. Themes, which are inextricably linked together and are at the same time absolute opposites. Inspired by Fauré’s “Requiem”, Dante’s “La Divina Commedia” and the absurd and surreal images of the artist duo “Les Deux Garçons”, Linning is searching for her own paradise on earth.REQUIEM is a multidisciplinary production with 25 dancers, live orchestra, two soloist singers, a choir, a sound artist and video. It is a triptych where the public will first walk on stage through dance installations; the dancers create a frozen, silent world.In the second part Fauré’s “Requiem” is being performed while singers and dancers follow Linnings choreography in a world of immense video images on stage. In the last part a Sound Artist will break apart Fauré’s “Requiem”. The frozen world of part one will melt and the energy of life will be released in a dynamic choreography for the choir and dancers.