The Poetic Vision of BELLA GAIA

Humanity must rise above the earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond. For only then will we understand the world in which we live. –Socrates

Upon attending the closing night of The Vortex Immersive Cinema series last Friday night, the topic for my first Examiner column was an obvious one. The 3-week run featuring eye-popping spectacles such as the DomeFest Retrospective, the best of the international DomeFest exposition of the most innovative works created for “fulldome” theaters, culminated with special presentations of BELLA GAIA, "a poetic vision of earth from space" performed live by award-winning director and classically trained violinist Kenji Williams.

View slideshow: Bella Gaia

Collaborating with NASA, BELLA GAIA promised a new form of experiential portal for which to make a deeper connection and empathy with our beautiful planet where we may see and feel how we as humans are affecting the delicate interconnected balance and how each element affects the other.

Chilled and reclined inside The Vortex Dome, the next-generation immersive cinema at LA Center Studios, the sold-out crowd was treated to one of the first experiences of its kind, a transmedia journey expressing the deeply moving beauty of planet Earth as seen through the eyes of astronauts, one that brought the power of art, technology, space science, and real scientific data visualizations together in a way that delighted the senses, sparked the imagination, and educated as equally as it entertained.

Within moments of hearing Williams' euphoric opening notes, orbiting visions of Earth from space lifted the expectant audience into a dramatic simulated space flight to reveal the stunning Overview Effect, a paradigm shifting sense of universal connection reported by astronauts during spaceflight. For the next 45 minutes all time slipped away as we came face-to-face with a startling reality: Earth as a tiny, fragile ball of life, hanging in the void of infinite space, one that exposed our insignificance and vulnerability yet provided an awe-inspiring perspective where national boundaries vanish, conflicts that divide us become less important and the need to create a planetary society with the united will to protect this “pale blue dot” becomes both obvious and imperative.

From high above the macrocosm down to life as we know it on terra firma, the universe-spanning narrative of Bella Gaia scaled effortlessly through world event scenes ranging from fires in the Amazon basin and time-lapse images of the Arctic ice melt to Egyptian pyramids, exotic Japanese temples, villages of Sri Lanka, and the jazzy urbane landscape of Manhattan. All along this voyage, our spacecraft was fueled by Williams' soaring musical score that flowed transcendentally from undulating rhythms and intricately detailed melodies to soothing celestial textures embellished with hypnotic effects reminiscent of Jean-Luc Ponty's Wandering on the Milky Way.

A ‘Living Atlas,’ BELLA GAIA has been designed as a work that will change and evolve over time. The potential to continually update and recreate the show is exciting and promising. If there were any immediate suggestions it might to be for Williams to stand out more against the awesome backdrop of the floating world so we could better see him gracefully weave his electro-acoustic tapestries into the total orbital gestalt. I'd also like hearing the astronauts words more so their sentiments are made all the more poignant at the moment when space, sound, image, mood, and wonder, collide.

Overall, employing the magic of “the fulldome effect” to communicate The Overview Effect is a sheer stroke of genius I hope everyone can experience one day. As presented through a large-format immersive platform such as The Vortex with its hemispheric screen, shows like BELLA GAIA not only impressively communicate the perspective altering experience of space but represent a compelling new medium for shifting consciousness from an earth-centered frame of reference to one moving across the entire solar system and beyond. What better way to grasp our place in the cosmos than this?

Mark Riva
Examiner.com

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