Tonight, Exit (also known as “Terre Natale”) opens at the AlhondigaBilbao in Spain. If you’re in Bilbao don’t miss this opportunity to experience the immersive 360-degree data projection.

From Stewart Smith: Exit (Terre Natale) is a 45-minute immersive visualization of human migration data divided into six narratives. Our historical focus is primarily from 1990 through today, augmented by occasional older data points or forecasts into the future. Humans migrate for various reasons. Political turmoil may create refugee migrations. Environmental disasters create refugees of a different sort. Some people migrate to wealthier economies sending micro-transactions, or remittances, home to their native land. We have recently crossed a threshold; 50% of humans have migrated from rural areas into cities. As of 2007 one out of every two people is now an urban dweller.

See previous Exit (Terre Natale) videos at http://stewdio.org/work/terrenatale or for more information see other Terre Natale blog posts

Today also marks 30 years since Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis hung himself.

Stewdio has been temporarily relocated to Copenhagen, Denmark at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in preparation for the opening of the Terre Natale (“Native Land”) exhibition this Friday at 8pm. Pictured above is the Terre Natale command center manned by Robert Gerard Pietrusko of Warning Office, Stewart Smith of Stewdio, and Nikolaus Völzow of the ZKM Institute. (Photograph by comrade Jeremy Linzee, formerly of Diller Scofidio + Renfro.) If in Copenhagen join us for the opening on Friday.

From Stewart Smith: Terre Natale, or “Native Land”, is an immersive visualization of human migration data. Our historical focus is primarily from 1990 through today, augmented by occasional older data points or forecasts into the future. Humans migrate for various reasons. Political turmoil may create refugee migrations. Environmental disasters create refugees of a different sort. Some people migrate to wealthier economies sending micro-transactions, or remittances, home to their native land. We have recently crossed a threshold; 50% of humans have migrated from rural areas into cities. As of 2007 one out of every two people is now an urban dweller.

See previous Terre Natale videos: http://stewdio.org/work/terrenatale

Currently in Copenhagen… Rendering LandSat data…

Earlier; the immersive rotunda wall under construction.

The exterior of the rotunda wall as seen from our hidden “command center” area. The lowered false ceiling and one of the surround speakers are visible against the backdrop of the Kunsthal Charlottenborg gallery.

Table one of two in the hidden command center.

Stewdio is temporarily relocating to Copenhagen next week to install the newly augmented Terre Natale exhibition piece at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg. (Stewdio phone and email will be redirected to Copenhagen; regular meetings to be held via Skype.) Terre Natale opens on Friday, 4 December and will be on display through Sunday, 21 February 2010. See Terre Natale on Kunsthal Charlottenborg for more information.

Next Tuesday, November 17th, Stewart will deliver a brief lecture at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, New York. His topic will be the Terre Natale (Exits Two) exhibition piece created by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, et al. His lecture is just one part of an evening of lectures under the banner Full Immersion: Art and the 360-degree screen, lead off by artist and scientist Bernd Lintermann of the Institute for Visual Media at ZKM, Karlsruhe. Be sure to see Eric Ameres, highly accomplished video engineer, and Thomas Soetens and Kora Van Den Bulcke along with their piece They Watch. The evening begins at 7pm in Studio 2.

Description from the Full Immersion page: An exceptional panel of international artists, engineers, and producers representing the evolving field of works created for the 360° panoramic screen. The panelists in Full Immersion – Stewart Smith, Bernd Linterman, Eric Ameres, and Thomas Soetens and Kora Van Den Bulcke of Workspace Unlimited – come from the visual arts, film, and data presentation. Some specialize in grand gestures, some write code. What they have in common is expertise in realizing works that surround the viewer, with effects that may be subtle, spectacular, or unsettling. In addition to talking about their field, they’ll also be showing up-to-the-minute examples of what’s been accomplished in it. The result will boggle not just the mind, but the eye and ear.

Bronson is a light-weight data visualization framework written in Processing by Stewart Smith and Robert Gerard Pietrusko specifically for the Terre Natale exhibition in Paris (November 2008). It was named in honor of actor Charles Bronson for his no-nonsense, brute-force approach to problem solving.

Bronson is capable of generating lengthy movies by dynamically loading and unloading complex animation instructions. It was built from scratch to satisfy some abnormal project specifications: a movie resolution of 6,800 × 768 pixels running at 30 frames-per-second, divided across six projectors onto a curved, panoramic target surface. (That’s over 150 million pixels per second.) Bronson outputs large, lossless movies that are then reformatted by a projection-curving and edge-blending system developed by ZKM.

Bronson is currently receiving some under-the-hood adjustments in anticipation of Terre Natale‘s travel to Copenhagen this December. More information to follow.

Below is a one minute excerpt from the half-hour show that demonstrates humanity divided equally between cities and rural areas, a threshold only recently crossed in 2007. In this visualization nearly six million pixel-sized “agents” fill the screen and flock to their geographic home. First the city-dwellers take their place, illustrating 50% of all living people occupying a tiny portion of Earth. Finally the remainder of “agents” take their place, filling out the familiar shapes of the continents.

Terre Natale – Population Shift (Pixel Flock) from Stewdio on Vimeo.

Professor Uli Cluss and his wonderful students from Stuttgart ABK in Germany

The second half of the presentation consisted of in-progress interactive work such as Avoider [unreleased], the Gimbels Passageway simulator for Ear Studio, and face-tracking games. The subsequent abstract discussion on Code Typography found a momentary anchor when comparing reformatted code whitespace to redecorated chord progressions as heard in Lua Hurts Everybody on Sullivan Street (DGeA). A short QA session followed, touching on the importance of play in design as a tool for discovery; always endeavor to fail in a brand new way.