For its fourth participation in the Regards de Photographes exhibition organized by the Town Council of Revel (Occitanie) from June 29 to July 14, 2024, the Culture Diff' company has chosen to exhibit, not photographs, but several screenshots of our Earth. These screenshots are the result of digital simulations carried out using an original 5D Sky/Earth interface.
The photographic process consists in capturing a fraction of space (the so-called field of view) for the duration of the shot, offering a snapshot of the focused environment. The video process - or the acquisition of a succession of photographs over a given period of time - offers the possibility of modifying the field of view during the capture - extending or reducing it, or even substituting it altogether. Both processes are fully dependent upon the arrow of time: they can only record a succession of present moments - relegated to the past as soon as they begin, thus composing a purely temporal or spatio-temporal sequence.
Digital simulation allows to define the moment, the duration and the field of view of the shot - to navigate in the past, to project yourself into the future, to capture the desired moment in a single screenshot, to combine several screenshots into an animation, to observe your own environment, to move to the other end of the galaxy, transforming into a space capsule, a time capsule or even a space-time capsule.
The five illustrations below form a spatial sequence (at constant time). They offer a glimpse of the sunset over the island of La Réunion on June 26, 2024, from the ocean shore, from the Earth's orbit, from interplanetary space, from the Moon's orbit and, finally, from the farthest reaches of our Solar System. An opportunity to discover, observe and perhaps even admire celestial landscapes that are usually inaccessible... and often unknown.
This space sequence was produced using the Sky / Earth 5D interface designed by Culture Diff'
These five « snapshots » were exhibited from June 29 to July 14, 2024, at the Cultural Get Center in Revel (31250), a small city in the Occitanie Pyrénées/Méditerranée region located to the east of Toulouse. Below are the various elements that make up this exhibition:
Below are the texts (in English) accompanying each screenshot.
As the Sun declines towards the horizon,
the atmosphere turns orange-red, the sky darkens,
revealing an increasing number of stars, of planets, ...
The thin layer of atmosphere protects Life on Earth,
transforming small celestial bodies into fine dust,
insulating it from powerful radiation from distant objects.
It is the only frontier between the inert and the Living.
A few tens of thousands of kilometers away ...
Our Earth appears as a thin crescent of light :
the result of the scattering of solar radiation by the atmosphere.
On the Moon's surface, our Earth makes its appearance.
Striking contrast between the inert and the Living!
- between dusty craters and the blue of the oceans.
From the very edge of the Solar System,
our Earth looks like a spaceship,
the only one capable of carrying Life across the infinite ...
