Gaia Journeys is a collaborative multimedia musical and virtual
reality art performance conceived by internationally acclaimed audio
visual artist Kenji Williams, with the aid of staff at the Denver
Museum of Nature & Science, and using imagery by panorama photographer
Greg Downing. Inspired by astronauts who spoke of seeing a borderless
world from orbit, Gaia Journeys' chief goal was to deliver this
experience to museum audiences by surrounding them with
photo-realistic virtual depictions of the globe from near Earth orbit
within an immersive virtual environment tightly choreographed to live
musical accompaniment. Gaia Journeys took place in the high
resolution digital "fulldome" Gates Planetarium, where audiences were
taken on an audiovisual virtual exploration of the Earth from orbit as
astronauts would see it, as well as from the surface through spherical
panoramic photography. During the performance, Williams played the
violin and keyboards, enhancing a self composed soundtrack, while the
virtual Earth from SCISS AB's Uniview software was navigated live.
Uniview allowed the audience to simulate orbital flight with high
resolution imagery and digital elevation maps of the virtual globe.
During excursions to specific surface locations on the Earth, eighteen
separate high resolution digitally-stitched spherical panoramic photos
were faded in and panned across. The six tracks of audio were 3D
spatialized to the 16.1 sound system of the Gates Planetarium,
providing an immersive sound experience to match the visuals.
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