Embark on a full-dome cinematic adventure

Jennifer: Being inside a full-dome theatre, completely encapsulated within the hemispheric screen, is an immersive and engrossing experience. Visitors to the Adelaide Film Festival’s Dome Project, presented by the Australian Network for Art and Technology, will have the opportunity to indulge in such an experience.

Perth has its own hemispheric theatre which is known as Horizon- a planetarium screening multimedia shows which take audiences on a virtual journey through the universe. I decided to re-visit Horizon upon reading about the Dome Project. The experience enthralled me. Perth’s portable planetarium, the Spacedome, belongs to Scitech Discovery Centre. As a Scitech Outreach Presenter, I am lucky enough to operate this mobile night sky and I bear witness to the fact that it never fails to captivate an audience.

Up until now, my own experience of full-dome theatre has been limited to astronomy-related programming. The Dome Project, a highlight of the 2009 Adelaide Film Festival, extends this powerful digital medium into the broader arts and sciences. Audiences will be exposed to works produced for full-dome environments by local and international artists.

The Best of DomeFest, screening at the Mawson Lakes Planetarium, showcases the most intriguing and innovative works submitted to the film festival over the past seven years. “Future Memory”, a dance film directed by South Australian artists Amanda Phillips and Alexander Waite Mitchell, will screen on the the Portable Dome at the South Australian Museum, as well as at the Golden Grove Arts Centre.

ANAT’s Filter magazine complements the Dome Project. Entitled “Screen Play”, the online and print editions examine the proliferation and impact of screens in contemporary urban life. This includes the influence of digital broadcasting, portable and online media and of course, the full-dome environment.

The Dome Project runs from February 21 and concludes with the symposium “Double Helix- Art and the Moving Image” at the University of South Australia on March 1. While full-dome presentations will be given at various locations in and around Adelaide throughout the week, the invitation to attend is not extended to Adelaideans exclusively. On the contrary, for those further afield, I believe that a visit to the South Australian capital during the 2009 Dome Project could be well worth the trip!

Filed under: Art, Digital Media, Events, Films , Art, public science

Nano in the Movies (revisited)

Kristin: A recent newsletter from AZoNano.com features a round-up of movies that use principles of the ’small’ and nanotechnology  in their story lines. Apart from old favourites I Robot and Terminator 2 (and the cancelled screen adaption of Prey by Michael Crichton) nanotechnology in the movies seems to be fairly thinly spread. We’ve tried extending this list in the past, but it has not been a fruitful search. AZo Nano suggests Star Trek. Pictured is an example of  the Borg. Apparently the Borg originate from medical nano-machines, but you’ll have to trust Wikipedia for that!

The origins of the Borg seem to be cross-over with biotechnology, an area replete with film examples.  In fact Biotechnology Australia was able to compile a report on the portrayal of cloning in the movies and examine how this related to public attitudes on cloning.

Perhaps this leads us back to the myriad of technologies, applications, risks and benefits that fall under the term ‘nanotechnology’. It is our experience in education and public awareness that discussing the applications and then considering the technologies make most sense for most people. Nanotechnology on its own does not grip the imagination. Our search for nano-related movies will have to be much broader to capture the applications that might use nanotechnology. Anything else from Star Trek???

Filed under: Awareness, Films, Nanotechnology , nanotech, nanovic, public nano, public science

Science meets art meets the law

Lisa: At Bridge8 we have always been interested in how science and art are able to meet and influence one another.  But what happens when science and art meet head on with the law? 

Steve Kurtz, a well known US artist specialising in bio-art, was arrested in 2004 after his wife died of natural causes at home and police visiting his house reported the lab equipment they saw (he was working on a piece on genetic modification for the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art at the time) to the FBI.  Kurtz was detained on suspicion of ‘bioterrorism’.  A grand jury later failed to bring any charges of bioterrorism against him, but this week the scientist who provided Kurtz with the bacteria for his artwork received a $500 fine under charges of mail fraud.  The species of bacteria involved were Serratia marcescens, a gram negative bacillus that occurs naturally in the soil, water and intestines.   You may have seen it in a common human habitat as a pink discolouration growing on the tiles in your bathroom!  The other species was Bacillus atrophaeus, a harmless non-pathogenic soil bacteria.

After the anthrax scare in the US in 2001, it is only right that strict controls over potentially harmful biological samples occurred.  After the anthrax scare, the Centre for disease control tightened strict laws on the use of select agents, defined to “have the potential to pose a severe threat to public health and safety”.  Whether making common organisms sound like they should be kept under lock and key shows that misunderstanding of the risks by law enforcement officials can have disastrous results.  The story of Steve Kurtz has been made into a documentary which you can find here.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Films, Risks

Nanoscience Fiction

Kristin: Lisa and I are compiling a list of nanoscience and nanotechnology in popular science fiction as one way of analysing public perceptions of nanotechnology.  Of course we know Prey by Michael Crichton, but if anyone can recommend some other novels or films with a good nano plot line, please email us.

Filed under: Awareness, Books, Films, Nanotechnology, Science