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All the Stars We Cannot See
April 5, 2022 at 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Join us for a drop-in demonstration by Dr. Megan Smith and Gao Yujie in the Visualization and Emerging Media Studio.
All the Stars We Cannot See is an immersive installation that situates participants within a virtual sky activated by 25,500+ satellites orbiting Earth. Smith and Gao are working to render visible the impact of satellite density in the sky, and to share information on the presence of technology surveillance globally. This installation is designed for a 270-degree panoramic screen, and open to the public for the first time
Come be immersed in this visual experience representing space traffic, satellite density, and makes a veiled political space!
This is a free event, and open to anyone to attend.
About the Project
The artwork is produced by pulling real-time data from N2YO using proprietary Application Programming Interface (API). Once the real-time data flows into the program, they work with the satellite footprint—latitude, longitude and altitude formatted into decimal degrees.
This geographic data is stored within individual pixel RGB data to a lossless image (i.e., where each pixel of the image contains specified position data for a satellite at a specific moment). The data is updated every 15 seconds and enables the viewers to identify movement.
‘All the Stars We Cannot See’ was made:
- to increase public exposure to space traffic density,
- to build opportunity for discussion on the impact of Space colonization, and
- to bring awareness to the political and economic driving forces that are currently occupying Space.
This work was presented at EVA London 2021, and Technarte Bilbao 2022.
About the Artists and Researchers
Dr. Megan Smith is a UBC 2022 Killam Laureate, Associate Professor in Creative Technologies and the Coordinator of the Bachelor of Media Studies in Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCSS). Her practice-based research probes systems for syndicated data and she often works with virtual and augmented reality, geo-location, live-feed installation, and performance as methods for storytelling.
Gao Yujie is a fourth-year Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies PhD student of Digital Arts and Humanities in FCCS. Her generative participatory performance work studies the materiality of duration and explores the elasticity of space and time in rule-based interactive environments.
