Machine Visions: Mojave (fulldome)

Machine Visions is a short, hemispherical music video intended for dome projection, created by using aerial 360 video to document features of the Mojave Desert landscape near Joshua Tree National Park. Photogrammetry was used to convert the resulting 360 videos into 3D models, which were rendered as wireframe meshes then re-animated in the Unity 3D game engine, exported as spherical videos, and reframed for hemispherical projection. The result is a visualization of the Mojave that blends lens-based images with software-based models. Machine Visions explores both the fragile ecosystem of the Joshua Tree, which was recently declared endangered due to climate change, and experiments with different technologies of vision to see what features of the landscape might be perceived by instruments, without being visible to the human eye. The omniscient perspective of a virtual camera in 3D game space is approximated by the 360 camera suspended from a quadcopter, executing algorithmically pre-programmed flight paths. Machine Visions explores the symmetries of human and computer vision through spectacular aerial and subterranean traversals of the Mojave landscape. The music is Victoria Lucas by Moby.