8120 - Me in the Universe
This commission is for some or all of the grouped and individual film exhibits – total budgets stated include your fees and all costs for creating the film content. (The physical exhibit build and AV hardware is covered in a separate exhibit build budget)
All film work must present a diverse range of voices on the exhibition floor, with a creative practice inclusive to all potential contributors – considerate to a balance of age, gender identity, BAME, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation.
An interactive film exhibit that inspires awe in the visitor at the vastness of the Universe, the immensity of the scales of existence and their place within that.
This exhibit unpacks the big question of the constellation by exploring a subquestion - how big is the Universe....that another me could exist in?
CONTEXT: this experience depicts the scale of the Universe and your place within it. Inspired by the Eames Powers of Ten film this is an immersive experience that puts the visitor at the centre of the film experience. You trigger the film by placing your hand on the horizontal projection surface. The film starts by zooming in or out of your own hand in real time. When zooming out it starts with a live image of your hand then out through We the Curious and Bristol, into the universe, so that you are physically placed within the scales of the Universe.
We will work with our exhibit fabricators, Bruns, to solve the camera and projector placement above the exhibit so that we can achieve the zoom in and out of the hand to start the films.
We also need to think about whether the visitor holds their hand there to run the film for the whole time or if they take their hand away to watch the film and replace it when the film starts to zoom back in.
The filmmaker will need to collaborate with Bruns to work out how the film is triggered. This should be done by calls or video conference as they are based in Holland and we are trying to work on this project with environmental impact in mind.
Note – we will not literally refer to powers of ten, per the Eames film as visitors don’t really understand this mathematically. We would like to commission a new work that gives the sense of vast scales and microscopic extremes of the universe.
Aesthetically, we are looking for work that perhaps uses authentic images of the cosmos and the micro world, or generates beautiful space/cell/ particle imagery without going as far as being hyper realised sci fi graphics. It needs to feel ‘real’ in the sense that we start with the real hand of a visitor and ground it in their location and scale, whether we are zooming out or in.
Duration: 2-3 mins max
Format: possible square aspect ratio for projection onto flat surface - tbc. This will be almost entirely original animation/graphics based work.
Budget: £16,000 to include all costs and any licences for images and audio
Work completed by Monday 10th August 2020