OF THE SPHERES

“…there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Preface, 1945)

On the 12th September 2013 NASA announced that the Voyager 1 probe had crossed the heliosphere, the bubble-like boundary of charged particles marking the outer limits of our solar system, and is now the first manmade object in interstellar space. Whilst this historic transition is taking place at the very outer limits of our solar system, Of the Spheres looks at the reach of technological communication and the perspectives on the earth that the Voyager probes give us.

Of the Spheres is an art project that pays homage to NASA’s Voyager 1 probe: C H R Θ M A is exploring the relationship between the human and the cosmos through a series of outdoor immersive performances and a site for spherical panoramas www.ofthespheres.com

Heliosphere, the first phase of the Of The Spheres project, is a 360º Sound & Vision performance for a projection dome that was staged as part of Brighton Fringe. To create the show we used data from Voyager's camera, electromagnetic and plasma wave instrumentation, and re-mixed this data with the contents of the Golden record from earth that is strapped to the space probe.

The second project is an Oculus Rift project - Conjunction - made for the UK’s solar eclipse of March 2015.

Exploring using new technologies to record human life on this planet and drawing on the growing field of Acoustic Ecology we are interested in using 360º Photo Spheres and sound recordings to explore the relationship between human beings and their environment. We are collecting panoramas from around the world that record places people identify as “home” >http://ofthespheres.com/share-your-sphere/

Through looking beyond our bubbles of personal experience and listening beyond our own spheres of existence can immersive media put us in contact with the multitude of ways that the globe is experienced by different people? Using techniques of re-mixing the the micro and the macro - life on earth and the sounds and visions NASA is collecting of the cosmos - we’re interested in making alternative perspectives of this earth more visible, audible and knowable.

Listen to CHROMA talk about the project for a special episode of BBC Click: Of The Spheres “sea-green"