interactive projection & generative 2-channel audio

“We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.” – Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Self-awareness is a matter of scale. When we were small, our entire world was our bedroom. The other occupants of this world were our family. We thought ourselves the center of a very small universe. As we grew and our world expanded in dimension and relation, we reassessed our self-awareness subconsciously and in corresponding scale. Astronauts viewing the Earth from space have documented the change in perspective that that vantage point has on the pettiness of conflict, fragility of survival, and beauty of existence. The human mind reels when encountering something magnitudes bigger or smaller than itself. And yet, both the physical and psychological response to these impossibilities is awe, wonder, and clarity of understanding our place in the universe.

Double Helix explores two extremities of scale: the structure of human DNA and NGC 7293, the Helix Nebula. Double Helix offers a tangible experience through sight, sound, and interaction to juxtapose these two seemingly disjunct ideas and discover surprising connections between them.

The raw content of this installation comes from photographs collected by NASA’s Hubble Telescope.