In an age of Google Earth where satellite imagery can be viewed at the click of a button, we’re all familiar with what the world looks like from above. Scientists use the application to discover new forests and islands that don’t exist; artists use it to create animations and digital installations.In FIELD‘s seventh story for their Energy Flow project, called “Skynet,” the duo recruited the help of digital artist Andreas Nicolas Fischer to explore the aerial landscapes and bird’s-eye view narratives of the world from above—along with detailing unfamiliar surfaces seen very close up.
Advertisement
Andreas Nicolas Fischer: The name is a reference to the ubiquitous computing network from the Terminator movie and I took that as inspiration for the piece. It started out with the idea of viewing the world from the perspective of a drone. So I took some NASA satellite photos that they have on their website that people can use and repurpose and I wrote a little script, a piece of software that would rearrange these images. First I had the idea to use a specific landscape, but I didn't want to reference the specific parts, so instead the script uses textures and satellite photos from all around the world and it recombines them into a new landscape—so that's one part of it.
Advertisement
No, I just got the brief from them and it was something that I came up with on my own. I see it as a continuation of the KT I – Les Embiez project, the cognitive map project I mentioned. So that was something that I was interested in for a while. To continue that, and to work more with that, and refine that. And I thought that fitted very well with the Energy Flow project. We had a couple of Skype conferences and we talked about making something that Marcus and Vera would be more involved with. But as it turned out, during the time of the project I had a lot of other stuff going on so I couldn't really fly over to London and I couldn't really make it into a collaborative effort, because of the coordination.
Advertisement
I think this is something that's really different depending on the viewer, it completely depends on the person who's watching it, depends on so many circumstances. There's nothing that I'm really hoping for. I want it to be open for interpretation—I can't think of anything specific that I would want it to trigger. It's more the associations that you might find you have with it.Visit EnergyFlow.io for more information on the project and more behind-the-scenes imagery. Check back on The Creators Project every week for an in-depth look at a different storyline or feature of the film.Meet FIELD in the video below…var isIphone = !!navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i);var isIpad = !!navigator.userAgent.match(/iPad/i);if(isIpad || isIphone){document.getElementById('szdsFNwbnII').src = 'http://www.youtube.com/embed/szdsFNwbnII';}@CreatorsProject