The American Museum of Natural History, in collaboration with Moby, is launching SonicVision, a groundbreaking digitally animated alternative music show. Presented in association with MTV2, SonicVision takes audiences in the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater on a mind-warping musical roller-coaster ride through fantastical dreamspace.
Heaven: Temple of Eyes "Honestly" This soaring image was created by artist Alex Grey to accompany Zwan's "Honestly" and adapted from his painting Collective Vision. Mixed by Moby and featuring tracks from Radiohead, U2, David Bowie, Coldplay, Queens of the Stone Age, Prodigy, The Flaming Lips, Fischerspooner, Spiritualized, Audioslave, Stereolab, Boards of Canada, David Byrne and Brian Eno, Goldfrapp, Zwan, White Zombie, and Moby, the music ignites this one-of-a-kind computer-generated musical and visual experience, which uses next-generation digital technology to illuminate the Planetarium's dome with a dazzling morphing of colorful visions. Beginning on Friday, October 3, 2003, SonicVision will be presented every Friday and Saturday evening at 7:30, 8:30, 9:30, and 10:30 p.m., in the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space. more info from The American Museum of Natural History and Alex Grey's website. SONICVISION: HOW DO YOU SEE YOUR MUSIC? NEW DIGITALLY ANIMATED ALTERNATIVE-ROCK MUSIC SHOW OPENS AT AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY SONICVISION TAKES AUDIENCES ON A MUSICAL JOURNEY FAR BEYOND OLD-SCHOOL LASER SHOWS, USING NEXT-GENERATION DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY TO ILLUMINATE THE HAYDEN PLANETARIUM'S DOME WITH A FANTASTICAL MORPHING OF COLORFUL VISIONS September 29, 2003…The American Museum of Natural History, in association with MTV2 and Moby, one of the world's best-known musical artists, launched SonicVision, a new 38-minute digitally animated alternative-rock music show, at a glittering launch party held tonight in the Museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space. SonicVision uses next-generation technology to blend today's popular music with the vibrant visual artistry of a diverse group of animators and video artists to create a spectacular new show presented in an incomparable venue-the Hayden Planetarium Space Theater, one of the world's largest and most powerful virtual reality simulators. A unique composition, SonicVision comprises individual works of musical and visual art that have been woven together with a single creative vision, carrying audiences off on a mind-warping musical roller-coaster ride through fantastical dreamspace. The show's music virtually ignites this one-of-a-kind musical and visual experience, which uses the Hayden Planetarium's renowned digital dome technology to illuminate the 6,550-square-foot dome with a dazzling morphing of colorful visions. SonicVision is made possible by generous sponsorship and technology support from Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Ever since the Rose Center opened in 2000, we had the idea of creating a new kind of music show that would take advantage of the Hayden's unparalleled technology and visual display system," said Ellen V. Futter, President, American Museum of Natural History. "SonicVision is a powerful, entertaining, and truly contemporary presentation that updates the popular laser show genre just as the Hayden Planetarium's digital dome has revolutionized the presentation of planetarium content." "When friends have asked me to describe the SonicVision show, I've had a hard time because, in addition to being remarkable, it really is completely different from anything else I've seen," said Moby. "Sun and the American Museum of Natural History share a common commitment to pushing innovation beyond the realm of what is achievable today," said Mark Tolliver, executive vice president, Marketing and Strategy for Sun Microsystems. "Through our collaboration on SonicVision with the Museum, one of the most technologically advanced planetariums and science research centers worldwide, we are helping to bring music alive in a truly unique manner for hundreds of thousands of visitors to experience each year." "We at MTV2 are pleased to be collaborating with the Museum on such an exciting, leading-edge project that we believe will be of great interest to our audience," said Tom Freston, Chairman and CEO, MTV Networks, and American Museum of Natural History Trustee. "SonicVision complements MTV2 perfectly-both appeal to the same youthful audience that gravitates to artistic innovation, in music and also in the visual arts." The first music show presented in the Rose Center since it opened in February 2000, SonicVision greatly extends the rich programming offered in the Rose Center-including the Hayden Planetarium's two incredibly popular Space Shows-and expands the boundaries of the 1970s and '80s laser shows featuring Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, leaving 20th-century technology and the old laser presentations far behind. The laser shows used single laser light beams to create a variety of slender geometric images, occasionally broken up by small stick figures that stretched, twisted, and spun among the "stars," set to the popular music of the day. A worthy 21st-century successor to the Planetarium's laser shows, SonicVision revolutionizes the planetarium music show concept through its use of immersive digital technology to intertwine the sights and the sounds-the captivating visualizations and the mesmerizing music-giving meaning to the question: "How do you see your music?" Moby and the Music Using his legendary musical talents to develop the mix for SonicVision, Moby-who has long been interested in space and astronomy-began collaborating with the Museum six months ago. The music mix features tracks from Radiohead, U2, David Bowie, Coldplay, Queens of the Stone Age, Prodigy, The Flaming Lips, Fischerspooner, Spiritualized, Audioslave, Stereolab, Boards of Canada, David Byrne and Brian Eno, Goldfrapp, Zwan, White Zombie, and Moby, ranging from the soothing sound of Zwan's "Honestly" to the wild spin of U2's "Elevation" to the rhythmic beat of Moby's own "Into the Blue" remix (please see the accompanying playlist for a complete list of songs). The music mix shifts from electronica to Britpop to grunge, blending the gritty sounds of grunge with the intensely insistent beats of rock to create a dynamic audioscape that carries audiences off on a roller-coaster ride, making hearts beat fast one moment and relax the next. SonicVision's Visual Artistry SonicVision has been created by a multidisciplinary team, many of whom also worked on both of the groundbreaking Hayden Planetarium Space Shows. Under the direction of Myles Gordon, Vice President for Education, and led by Anthony Braun, Executive Producer, the team of animators, experts in 2-D and 3-D design, editors, and media artists combined their technical and artistic skills to develop a dazzling show whose music explodes to life on the Hayden Planetarium dome in an astounding fusion of digital images and animations. Former MTV Art Director Chris Harvey joined the Rose Center production team as SonicVision's Creative Director and collaborated with 19 artists and animators, including the commercial production company Curious Pictures-producer of television shows for the Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and HBO-and artists Alex Grey, Perry Hall, and Darrel Anderson, and popular video jockeys (VJs) Bionic Dots, Benton C., Madame Chao, Atmospherex, Vishwanath Bush, and others. An integral part of the rapidly growing video art movement, whose members use moving images and audio data to create artworks, VJs manipulate video and animations to music in the same way DJs mix records; they have made video art an integral feature of underground clubs and several of the most popular VJs in New York City have contributed to the making of SonicVision. Through the creative efforts of these artists and animators, the Hayden dome becomes a digital art gallery, pulsating with hypnotic cutting-edge VJ art. This extraordinary production team, which also included Paul Schneider as Producer, Benjamin Bernhardt as Director of Engineering, and Mark Bajuk as Lead Technical Director, has created a stunning music show in which each scene smoothly transforms into the next, blending separate artists' renderings into one seamless ultra-high-resolution visual experience, in tandem with the shifting dynamics of the music. In a continuous journey, sometimes tranquil, sometimes turbulent, the show's visuals seem to pull the viewer through tangled, seemingly impenetrable webs and impossibly winding, colorful mazes out into open, serene space. Dizzying animations launch audiences into fantasy space as Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place" resonates; the Boards of Canada's instrumental "Julie and Candy" brings viewers to an extraordinary space where cathedral-like structures are erected all around them; and Zwan's "Honestly" spins the audience wildly up into the heavens. Viewers watch "aliens" rave at a dance party, float off into space as fireworks seem to explode across the Hayden Planetarium's entire dome, and witness a fiery kaleidoscope descending from overhead. Technology of the Hayden Planetarium SonicVision's pulsating sounds and dazzling visuals meet in the Museum's Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, home to a sophisticated array of projection technology, digital effects, and advanced audiovisual capabilities. In its 429-seat Space Theater, the Planetarium offers two highly acclaimed Space Shows-Passport to the Universe, narrated by Tom Hanks, and The Search for Life: Are We Alone?, narrated by Harrison Ford-and provides scientists with an opportunity to display complex scientific data sets on its dome. The Planetarium has been the site for major conferences and symposia at which researchers have used the Hayden's advanced visualization technology to share research, such as examining in detail large three-dimensional computer models of tiny fossil mammal skulls that can be rotated 360-degrees on the dome, and studying simulations of stellar collisions, using massive sets of incredibly complex data. Located in the four million-pound Hayden Sphere, the Space Theater generates galactic maps, colorful animation, and virtual reality and projects these visuals onto a 69-foot-wide, 38-foot-high dome-shaped screen. With seven video projectors, more than 500 low-frequency shakers in the seats and on the floor of the theater, 23 speakers, and a specially designed audio spatialization system-which projects sound to and from different locations in the dome creating a sense of virtual three-dimensionality-the Space Theater gives audiences a stunning 360-degree panorama integrally linked to a unique, rich, all-digital audio environment. With sound seeming to come from any and every location in the dome, the Space Theater gives audiences a truly immersive experience. To achieve this spectacular immersive illusion, animators used a range of software programs for modeling, compositing, and rendering images-some with real-time visualization capabilities-including Pixar's Renderman, MAYA, XSI, Shake, Virtual Director, and a special multi-pipe version of Filmbox, designed especially for use in the Hayden's Space Theater. The production team mixed these animation tools to create colossal, multilayered images uniquely tailored to the arched dome display in the Hayden Planetarium-some of which took weeks to render. In addition, audio response analysis technology, which enables animation images to react rhythmically to sound, was used to make some of the animations coordinate and move with the music. SonicVision's 1.3 terabytes of uncompressed digital data, which is approximately 32 times the storage space on an average personal desktop, require the use of seven customized digital disc recorders to translate the information into the seven high-resolution video projectors-the largest tube video projectors in the world-located in the Hayden Planetarium. These data, when projected onto the curved screen, envelop viewers in a full dome image-space, displaying 28 times more image information than on a standard television screen. The unique visuals of SonicVision were generated by using 118 processors; 72 Intel Xeon processors are running the Linux operating system and 46 SGI Mips processors are running the Irix operating system. With 78 processors the Museum already had in place and 40 more processors from Sun Microsystems, Inc., this 118-processor render farm (a group of linked processors that turns data into images) manages the incredible amount of data (some nine terabytes or the storage space of 225 personal computers) being rendered, processed, and created. With this exceptionally powerful technology, coupled with compelling imagery and contemporary music, the Museum's Hayden Planetarium leads the way for an entirely new generation of music shows for the 21st century. Support SonicVision is made possible by generous sponsorship and technology support from Sun Microsystems, Inc. Schedule and Ticketing Information Beginning on Friday, October 3, 2003, SonicVision will be presented on Friday and Saturday nights, with shows at 7:30, 8:30, 9:30, and 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $15.00 for the general public, $12.00 for Museum Members. For more information or to purchase tickets, the public should call 212-769-5200 or visit http://www.amnh.org. American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to explore and interpret human cultures and the natural world through a wide-reaching program of scientific research, education, and exhibitions. The Museum accomplishes this ambitious goal through its extensive facilities and resources. For more information on the American Museum of Natural History, visit the Museum's Web site at http://www.amnh.org . The Hayden Planetarium and the Frederick Phineas & Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space SonicVision is presented in the Hayden Planetarium in the Museum's highly acclaimed Frederick Phineas & Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space. Originally opened to the public in 1935, the Hayden Planetarium was re-created as part of the Rose Center project, and reopened, with the Rose Center, in February 2000. The Planetarium is housed in the magnificent Hayden Sphere, whose upper hemisphere holds the Space Theater. The theater's popular Space Shows offer the public a realistic, scientifically accurate, close-up view of planets, star clusters, and galaxies in an exhilarating, continuously accelerating journey from Earth to the edge of the observable universe. The monumental 120-foot-high, 333,500-square-foot Rose Center, which has won numerous prestigious design awards from such influential organizations as the American Institute of Architects and Time magazine, has become a popular location for a wide range of feature films-including K-Pax, Spiderman II, and Men in Black II-and special broadcasts, such as ABC 2002, a news and entertainment show hosted by Peter Jennings on New Year's Eve 2002, and the opening for the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards, which broadcast Bruce Springsteen live to a global audience from the Rose Center.
