Media Installation: Atmosphere

Technical details: “giga” digital composition and two-sided printing on a façade screen, scene elements, video projection and interactive sound programs for the atrium and elevators.

Background:

The gaseous planet Saturn, with its numerous moons and rings, is one of the most mysterious places in our solar system. Scientists regard the system of gases and solid matter in Saturn’s rings as a possible model for theorizing the origins of
planets in our solar system. Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, has an atmosphere reminiscent of the Earth’s prior to the emergence of life, due to its high concentrations of nitrogen and hydrocarbons. In 1982, an organization was formed comprising America’s NASA, Europe’s ESA, and Italy’s ISA; this group launched the Cassini international satellite, equipped with the Huygens
research probe. Huygens is scheduled to enter Titan’s atmosphere on January 15 of 2005.

Project concept:

To construct structures in the atrium: a “cosmogenetic” greenhouse and a spatial map of objects, concepts, states, processes and events of the world in which we live and in which we create the future.Visualization and execution of the project: A large image screen will descend from the glass ceiling of the atrium and will divide the space in half, above Irwin’s marble map of the world, at 46 03' north latitude, where Ljubljana is located. The two-sided digital composition, which drops to a height of two-and-a-half meters above the floor, is printed on a perforated curtain measuring 9 x 20 meters. Images on the two sides portray the fantasy and conceptualization of the electromagnetic spectrum of light and research in the field of quantum physics. Due to its size, translucency, and the changing daylight in the atrium, its appearance will vary depending on the time of day and the weather.  The image will have the characteristics of an atmosphere, and it will be possible to experience it completely differently from the elevator.

The concept of the project includes use of interactive sound compositions in the atrium and in the elevators. The large image in the central space will be equipped with an interactive soundscape in which a blending of nature sounds and the orchestral music of Gustav Mahler will be triggered by the movement of visitors through the space. Motion sensors on the floor and light sensors installed near the atrium’s ceiling will ensure that the sound changes throughout the course of the day. Another image placed in the elevator shafts will descend through three underground garage levels and will feature the underwater world and the Earth’s magma. The elevators will also be equipped with an interactive soundscape, which will change as passengers move up a vertical journey from the Earth’s magma core, to the sea floor, through ocean waters, ground vegetation, and open air and then to the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere and down again.

The installation will extend into a gallery adjacent to the atrium where a video projection will divide the space in half. An aggregation of images made from an imagined “utility fog” (a polymorphic microcomputer of the future) will entirely fill the walls of the gallery. A bar fashioned out of recycled images and located on the border of Slovenia and Italy will delineate two states, two realities, mapping old and new Europe. The people in the bar appear as if in a cylindrical vessel known as a “Cryostat” and nano-scale experiments transpire in this “quantum well,” fusing new worlds. A video projected onto a billboard shows an abandoned planet trapped in a crystal ball and reveals an atmosphere filled with orbiting garbage, accompanying and revolving with the planet. A cacophony of sounds such as breaking glass, ice cubes and urban environments alternates with a cosmic silence as the camera turns and slips into the yellow of Saturn’s rings.