Visualization and Reality
A planetarium colleague of mine posted a comment on Facebook about how he was accused of “faking data” as he described immersive storytelling on their institution’s dome through visualization. Essentially, he was using star motion as a metaphor for the passage of time (as he explained it). Since I write and produce fulldome shows, the accusation and his explanation piqued my interest. I use visualizations in all my work (fulldome, books, articles, etc.) and it never once occurred to me to think of it as “fake”. If it’s based on data, what’s fake? What’s real?
OF COURSE, ALL of what we show on the dome is not real. It’s based on data. Every planetarium instrument (whether opto-mechanical or digital) does this. Whether they show pinpoints of light recreating the positions of stars in the actual sky or something as complex as a flight through a nebula, planetariums are among the vanguard of the theaters using data to recreate reality. The minute I take my Digistar and put it into traveling mode, I’m recreating what it might be like if I could engage my starship at Warp 9 (or whatever speed limit the Federation is allowing now) and fly among the stars. I’m simulating flight through space AND time. Just as my colleague was intending to communicate with his video clip and demonstration. So, I guess I’m a little puzzled by the accusation, especially since it came from another planetarian presumably used to seeing star motion on a dome.
It’s also intriguing because this week I’m judging a group of videos for a science film festival, and without their good visualizations of everything from weather events to dinosaurs and comets, these films wouldn’t be nearly as interesting (both scientifically and as vehicles for storytelling) as most of them are. So, let’s talk about visualization.