In late 2009 I created a New Year’s Resolution of sorts with some friends to stay active outside of work as artists and designers. The idea was to have a monthly topic that each participant would respond to. The medium of choice was whichever field the participant wanted to be employed in on year from then. This first ‘warm-up’ topic for the month of December was, “the most epic, out of this world thing you can think of.” I set out, as usual, by brainstorming and conceiving of an idea that was unique and interesting to me. I dissected the topic into to ideas: ‘epic’ and ‘out of this world.’ EPIC: heroic; majestic; impressively great; of unusually great size or extent OUT OF THIS WORLD: exceptional in character, amount, extent, degree “What then” I asked, “could be more impressively great than the universe? It is everything we know, yet something we know almost nothing about.”
I have to admit right here, right now that I held no interest in ‘outer space’ until I began this project. ‘Space’ didn’t matter to me, I was never going there; who cares? Well, this project helped my inner-sciene-nerd emerge and I can now admit that out space is pretty cool 8^B (that’s my nerd face, right there. Look closely). Some research about the cosmos revealed multiple scopes at which to view the inverse. There were so many sizes, groups, clusters, expansion, collapsing etc. I set out to design an interactive experience which focused on imagery, size and knowledge. I arrived at my mission statement after sketches and lots of notes:
Cosmos is an interactive learning tool which exhibits the majesty of the Universe.