'The Hubble Cantata' Weds Live Music with VR Views of the Cosmos

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Source: Live Science

Thousands of stars are forming in the cloud of gas and dust known as the Orion Nebula, which is featured in the VR immersive installation, "The Hubble Cantata."

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team


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As audience members don cardboard headsets and activate a free app, immersive VR animations created from actual Hubble photos will transform Prospect Park into a display of celestial objects. The 5-minute-long VR film, titled "Fistful of Stars," will offer viewers the perspective of actually traveling through space.

A concentric array of eight speakers surrounding the audience will enable the concert audio to travel around and through them in 3D space, according to the event's acoustics researcher and designer, Terence Caulkins.

The installation represents a collaboration among artists, engineers and scientists, developed at the New Museum in New York City as part of its art incubation program, New Inc.

The musical commission originated with the concept of accompanying Hubble imagery and collaborating with Mario Livio, an astrophysicist who worked with Hubble for 24 years, "Hubble Cantata" composer Paola Prestini told Live Science in an email.

Read more: http://www.livescience.com/55537-hubble-cantata-vr-performance.html

The marriage of science, technology and the arts... how exciting!

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