Saturday 19 December 2009

National Space Centre - Continuum Research Trip

Chris, Ian and me visited the National Space Centre in Leicester to conduct research for the Continuum project. We met with Paul Mowbray, the director of NSC Creative, the department responsible for creating high end computer generated fulldome animations for planetariums worldwide. Paul very kindly offered his time to run through a couple of nagging questions about the shift from flat plane video to the hemispherical immersive environments of planetarium screens. The meeting also gave us the opportunity to watch some of the teams productions on their planetarium screen, which is even bigger than the one at Life, measuring a whopping 60 ft in diameter - it's huge! The experience was different again from that of previous planetariums I had visited. I realised that taking this work on from Life could be tricky, especially when it comes to defining the 'sweet spot' and mixing the soundscape.