Ruth West, Violet Johnson, I-Chen Yeh, Zach Thomas, Eitan Mendelowitz, Lars Berg: INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night

INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night lets you jam to the rhythm of 817‚373 stars through the power of VR. Created from starlight reaching robotic telescopes in Antarctica‚ after a 160‚000 year journey‚ the experience transports players inside of a star field from the heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud. The multi-player experience brings the rhythms of the cosmos to life in an endless remix instrument. Inside this luminous space‚ multiple players explore and collaboratively create new visual and sound remixes from unique data about the stars.

Big data has met its creative match. We’re transforming over 758 million data points about 817‚373 stars into a virtual world of light and sound. XR technologies employed include: Data-driven and networked multi-player procedural graphics and ambisonic audio‚ GPU-accelerated machine learning‚ high-resolution displays‚ precision tracking‚ and multi-player collaborative interaction in virtual reality.

INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night is supported in part by an award from the US National Endowment for the Arts: 15-5400-7043 and by BenQ America Corporation. We’re seeking additional sponsors to support the production of IOAN and its exhibition at SIGGRAPH 2018 and international venues.

INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night is supported in part by an award from the US National Endowment for the Arts: 15-5400-7043 and by BenQ America Corporation. We thank Lifan Wang and Lingzhi Wang of Texas A &M and the Beijing Astronomical Observatory for their generous consultation and support of this art-science installation. We thank the Antarctic Survey Telescope array and PI Lifan Wang for making available AST3-1 data. We thank Roger Malina‚ University of Texas Dallas‚ for his generous consultation in astrophysics and art-science and his support of this work. This artwork made use of the VizieR catalog access tool‚ CDS‚ Strasbourg‚ France. The original description of the VizieR service was published in A&AS 143‚ 23. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int /gaia)‚ processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC‚ https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/ dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions‚ in particular‚ the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement.