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SPACESHIP EARTH

Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester, New York State, USA (in progress)

CONCEPT

Even as we are standing still, we are already traveling on board Spaceship Earth. We use this counter intuitive state of being that all earthlings are born into and live by to explore aspects of the time and space related mysteries, right here, within layers of nested inertial frames that are not easily accessible to our immediate senses.

ARTWORK INDOOR COMPONENT

A Spaceship Earth Station at RMSC 2nd floor façade window. Visitors are invited to come on board Spaceship Earth by operating a lens installed at the window, which can frames the outdoor sculpture in concentric steps. Each framing will turn on the speedometer counter that tells us the speed and distance we are traveling onboard Spaceship Earth in real time. They choose between: to ride as fast as Earth’s rotation on its own axis, orbiting the Sun, revolving around the galactic center, or against the Cosmic Microwave Background.

  • Earth rotates on its own axis in 756.890 ml/h, at the Latitude of the RMSC, 43.152736º.
  • Earth orbits around the Sun at 66,486.717544 ml/h.
  • Our Solar System revolves around the galactic center at 497,096.9536 ml/h.
  • We move against the Cosmic Microwave Background at an average speed of 497,096.9536 ml/h.

ARTWORK OUTDOOR COMPONENT

An Open Ring Sculpture of 20’ in diameter, and a bell embedded on a 24” sphere in front of it. They sit within a Concentric Circle Design Paving Area.
The Open Ring frames the lens on the façade window. The Bell will allow passing public to sample the Tonal Center (at 323.634 hertz, 21st octave) of our Spaceship Earth as it travels through space.
*           Earth rings out its fundamental frequency pitch while traveling through space, like a tuning fork will always persist in its particular pitch because of it material and shape. That is why an opera singer could intone her or his voice to the fundamental resonance pitch of a particular glass and shatter it to pieces.