THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EARTH INTO GLOBUS CASSUS -------------------------------------------------- GLOBUS CASSUS by Christian Waldvogel, ©2002-2006 All rights reserved. cwaldvogel@sub-culture.ch http://www.waldvogel.com FILE NAME: globuscassus_1.01.zip VERSION: 1.01, 02/01/2007 AUTHOR: Christian Waldvogel ---------------------------------------------------------------- DESCRIPTION: Globus Cassus is a fictional proposition for the construction of a much larger, hollow habitat, using the Earth as building material. It was conceived as a philosophical art project by the autor and was first presented in the Swiss pavillion at the Venice Architecture Bienniale in 2004. This addon is based on the files that the autor used in several art exhibitions in 2006. Globus Cassus is an antipode to the world - not only spatially, but also in time. It is the precisely drawn up opposite of the world, and it is meant to be thought about, not to happen. It is therefore set in the infinite future, which in Celestia translates into 09/09/9999, starting at 09:09:09 in the morning (so that it can be visited using the "Goto time" panel). The time it takes to complete the transformation is also not defined, however it needs to be so the transformation can be programmed in Celestia. The succession of events is set in a way that at time sped up to 1000 times an animation at comfortable speed can be viewed. Hence when viewing the animated transformation the displayed date is faulty and irrelevant. Christian Waldvogel's little black book "Globus Cassus" (www.lars-muller-publishers.com, ISBN 3-03778-045-2) received the gold medal in the international competition "Best designed books from all over the world" in 2005. MORE INFO ON GLOBUS CASSUS: Transformation story told by Michael Stauffer, illustrated with images by Christian Waldvogel: http://www.globus-cassus.org/text/stauffer.html Project description by Claude Lichtenstein: http://www.globus-cassus.org/text/lichtenstein.html Philosophical interpretation by Boris Groys: http://www.globus-cassus.org/text/groys.html Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globus_Cassus ---------------------------------------------------------------- REQUIREMENTS: Celestia version 1.4.0 or higher. Lots of RAM (>1GB) and VRAM (>64MB) is recommended. I run it quite smoothly on an Apple PowerBook G4 1.25GHz with 2GB RAM and 64MB VRAM. INSTALLATION: Unzip the files and place the globuscassus folder in your celestia extras folder. For correct font display in the demonstration script replace your celestia.cfg with the one in the unzipped globuscassus folder. It will only change the display fonts. RUNNING: Start Celestia and execute one of the following procedures: - Read "THE FONTS ISSUE" and "KNOWN BUGS" - run the script "transforming_the_earth.celx" from the file menu. You find it in the "scripts" folder in the globuscassus folder you just installed. The script uses a random star out of four hundred named stars as it's point of reference and some random camera movement parameters, so you will see a different animation everytime you view it. or - Read "KNOWN BUGS" - Set time speed to 1000 - Take a viewpoint about halfway to Moon, looking towards Earth - Goto date 9999/06/06 at 09:09:09 - Tip: select object "Sol/xEarthCamera" and sync orbit (Y key) THE FONTS ISSUE: The script makes use of subtitles which have been optimised for a set of fonts that differs from the default one. So if you want to see it as planned open the file "celestia.cfg" in a text editor, and search for "Font definitions". Change the argument for "Font", "LabelFont" and "TitleFont" to "clean12.txf" each. Save the file, reopen Celestia, and run the script. Sorry for the inconvenience! KNOWN BUGS: - Starting Celestia and directly watching the story produces a somewhat shaky animation. This is due to the amount of meshes and textures that need to turned on and off rapidly repeatedly. Once Celestia has played the whole thing all data resides in RAM and the animation runs much smoother. This is one of the reasons why the presentation script is an infinite loop. - Due to the complexity of the meshes and to secure proper alignment a "spacer object" was needed. Unfortunatley, the Open GL renderer cannot resolve the correct display of multiple, pseudo-overlapping objects when the camera is within the boundaries of these objects. Going close to Globus Cassus during the construction phase might result in strange display faults. However, once Globus Cassus is finished, one can enjoy the inside view without these artifacts, besides some that are visible when getting very close to the outer shell. ---------------------------------------------------------------- THANKS TO: Chris Laurel for Celestia, Selden, ElChristou, dirkpitt and Cham from the Celestia community for their help in getting me started and running; Michael Stauffer for his wonderful text, Matthias Gnehm, Tim Krohn, Philipp Lehmann, Claudia Meier and Irene Waldvogel for their constant support; Joerg Waldvogel for the mathematical consulting and the following persons for having contributed in one or the other way to get Globus Cassus to where it is: Ludovic Balland, Stefan Banz, Paul Bernhard, Vinzenz Blaas, Jacqueline Burckhardt, Antoine Chessex, Davide Ciresa, Beat Consoni, Pia Durisch & Aldo Nolli, Michael Gnehm, Fabio Gramazio, Boris Groys, Alex Hanimann, Markus Hofmann, Christine Jeanneret, Roger Kaestle, Christoph Kurth, Jacques and Nelly Lassere, Claude Lichtenstein, Tobias Madoerin, Carlos Martinez, Lars Mueller, Jean-Paul Munsch, Andreas Muster, Marianna Palfrader, Michael Robinson, Karin Sartori, Adrian Scherer, Urs Staub, Isa Stuerm, Otmar Trentz, Pius Tschumi, Philipp Ursprung, Jonas Voegeli and Christoph Wernli. You were, and still are, great! ---------------------------------------------------------------- SOURCES: Globus Cassus' inside texture was generated using imagery from NASA's Blue Marble, and so is the superimposed atmosphere. In some of the Earth's final stages one can find traces of Rob Sanders' Rigel Kentaurus A planet Vimana. The presentation script uses the Celestia command call function and a variation of the random star function that can be found in the wikibook on Celx scripting. ---------------------------------------------------------------- VERSION HISTORY 1.01, 02/01/2007: minor changes in README, added celestia.cfg 1.0, 22/12/2006: Initial release ---------------------------------------------------------------- COPYRIGHT: Globus Cassus by Christian Waldvogel, ©2002-2006 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the FREE ART LICENSE, Version 1.2 or later (http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/). No commercial use. DISCLAIMER: Neither the author nor any party involved in creating, producing, or delivering this product shall be liable for any direct, incidental, consequential, indirect or punitive damages or any damages whatsoever arising out of your acces, use, or inability to use this product, or any other errors or omissions in the content thereof. It is your responsibility to take precautions to protect yourself from trojan horses, viruses, worms or other items of a destructive nature.