Evokation - EarthFall - the commentary of the Earth

“Twitterfall is a UK-based website designed to allow users of the social networking site Twitter to view upcoming trends and patterns posted by users in the form of tweets.”

“EarthFall is an international environmental art installation created by Kevin DiVico and designed to allow the human inhabitants of the Earth to view upcoming climate change trends and patterns as posted by the Earth in the form of Data “waterfalls”.

Vision- EarthFall is designed to provide a sense of awareness for people the world over through color and
symbols and music.

Mission- EarthFall’s mission is to create a groundswell of awareness on the effects of climate change on the planet
and its inhabitants.

1. The Place: To inspire people to learn about climate change and is effects on the planet, EarthFall needs to reach the highest density of population possible. We do this through a combination of virtual and reality based installations. Six reality installations will be placed in the largest population based cities on each continent to allow physical interaction between their populations and the EarthFall monoliths. A seventh portable installation will tour the world bringing EarthFall to places and people who cannot get online or to the city installs. In the virtual world, EarthFall will have a webpage, a Virtual world Installation in Second Life, Live camera feeds of all six permanent sites, a Smart phone app for all platforms , and a open source api that will allow for people to build additional ways to communicate EarthFall as we move into the future.

2. The Challenge: One of the greatest challenges facing environmentalists is to spur broad spectrum deep population support for climate change policies. But before support occurs, awareness must be created that is visceral and relatable to the world’s population. Climate change is a complex problem but
complex problems and complexity in general is difficult for people to grasp and understand. Simple problems like arithmetic is easy to grasp, complicated problems like placing a man on the moon requires
resources and highly schooled experts and while a majority of people cannot do the work they can relate and understand the processes. Complex problems offer a greater challenge; for most people cannot fathom the problem let alone help shape an idea for a solution so they do not even acknowledge a problem exists and therefore continue business as usually but that is a dangerous and zero sum game to play.

EarthFall will serve as a wakeup
call, one that cannot be ignored. EarthFall will be of benefit by allowing anyone to easily see and understand the health of the planet through the planets own commentary in the form of sensor readings. Once awareness takes hold, then a desire for education and knowledge will follow, and the groundswell of support will occur that will empower governments to initiate the changes needed to preserve civilization into the future.

3. The Idea: EarthFall is based on a linked planet of sensors delivering
information that is then visualized in the form of falling waterfall of colors and shapes set to a musical tone serving as the heartbeat of the planet.

An EarthFall installation consists of 12 monoliths; one for each continent and one for each ocean. The monoliths are arrange in set up reminiscent of Stonehenge, the ocean monoliths form the outer ring – each one set at a cardinal point of the compass, the inner monoliths form six of the continents and the central one is represents the continent Antarctica (as well as ice covered locations of Greenland, and the arctic ice flows). The design for the monoliths will be transparent material safely allowing for the projection of the Earthfall data streams within them. In design,

The ocean monoliths are the largest and widest, and then come the continents slightly smaller and narrower then the ocean monoliths, and finally the Antarctic monolith is the smallest centered in the bull’s-eye of the installation. Each monolith is thick, consisting of what appears to be clear glass. Each side will stream the data flows from sensors on their respective earth bound locations; the data flows are translated in to colors reflecting the current state of the planet based on a variety of metrics (pollution, climate change gases, desertification, human population, biodiversity, temperature). These metrics will be able to be switched to on or off in different combinations for different days of the week, while on the weekend all of them run simultaneously. So as we move forward, we can watch the earth’s commentary on itself and see the changes in real time.

If you look on the ground, the Monoliths stand in concentric circles, the oceans in a blue marble circle with their names etched in, the next band is green marble and the bull’s-eye is white marble. The people will be able to walk in and among the monoliths, there by seeing the state of the planet and its fluctuations both good and bad in real time. To show a sense of time scale however, we will open the exhibit with data sets
representing the Earth as it was 160 years ago.
Earthfall begins representing the Earth as it was 160 years
ago.

On opening day, EarthFall’s data sets will change reflecting one year per day. The initial sets of colors will reflect the state of the planet, white/blue for the ice covered areas, cool colors (blues, greens) reflect the areas of healthy planet, areas of desertification in browns and tans, and images consisting of symbolic outlines of floras and fauna & human population will reflect population numbers. Changes in climate and biodiversity will be reflected with the amount of cool color pixels vs hot color pixels present in the data fall. Biodiversity will be represented by symbolic outlines of animals, Humans and plants which will increase or decrease or be taken off the display as their populations dwindle or go extinct or multiply. The intensity of the colors will play a part as well, dimming or brightening of the intensity of their respective metrics as that metric increase or decrease.
Once EarthFall catches up with its installation date it will
reflect the current state of the planet where it switches over to real time sensing and continues forward as a health report for the planet that everyone can see and quickly and innately understand.

A separate series of kiosk will educate people as to the nature of the installation available in all languages. A video of the change over the first 150 days representing the Earth going from 1860 to 2010 will be available on line and at the kiosks for users to play back and forward along the time axis to see what happened where and when. All parts of the installations will reflect and exceed ADA guidelines for accessibility. EarthFall will be open for all people to visit and experience.

How it works: Earthfall comes alive in three phases.

The first is design & resource acc**ulation– here a NPO will be set up to serve as a infrastructure for Earthfall. Grants, foundations, corporate partners, angels, and people in general will be able to support EarthFall through the NPO. Here, the design team will be assembled consisting of technologists, data visualization artists, sculptors and engineers. The baseline data visualizations will be created, miniatures of the installation tested, and final a full scale one built. For power EarthFall ideally should be powered by solar, wind, nuclear or some other form of non fossil fuel power but locations and practical considerations will be taken into account. The data streams will come from corporate & government supporters EU, UN, NASA, NOAA, IBM Smarter planet, Cisco and like initiatives.

Phase two is the city Installations and first 160 day march towards real time sensing.

Phase three is the maintenance phase - real time visualization of data is up and running.

Music plays a part as well, for the first 160 days music will play to accompany the data, 160 compistins, one for each year will play. The music will be drawn from around the world. This helps create a sense of reverence for the work. Once the EarthFall is in real time display, then a new piece of music, especially created for the installation that will serve as the heartbeat of the planet will begin. This will be adjusted via tone and volume to reflect changes in the data.

EarthFall will succeed because it
is a visual and auditory experience that gives a quick instantaneous snapshot of the health of our planet that will be viscerally understood by anyone seeing or hearing it regardless of culture, education level, or beliefs. Not relying on words or the need to understand charts and data sets, EarthFall ties everyone into the pulse of the Planet and its health.

4. The Money: The first 1000 dollars contributed
to Earthfall would go to the legal establishment of the NPO (I would look to make it a Virtual NPO under the law of the State of Vermont, thereby allowing for virtual office structure and anywhere a legal representative opened up their laptop we have a legal office). A web presence
would take the remainder of the money, with any leftover going for USA 501 c3 filing costs.

EarthFall was conceived by me, Kevin DiVico but I need you – the people of Evoke to see it become a reality. If you like to work on the project please contact me directly at Winter at Rochester.rr.com or through my Evoke profile.

EarthFall may have been conceived by one, but it will be realized by the contributions of all.

Thank you for your time.

Namaste