From Planetaria Obscura January 2017
I bought a rotating turntable for my star cylinder, and decided my 15 foot dome wasn't big enough, but lacked the charm of my old smaller 10 foot dome. So . I hit on the idea to cut down the size while keeping aspects of the larger theater.
How would it unfold? Well it revolves .. It REVOLVES around motion, ‘relatively’ speaking. I was struck by the guy in Minnesota’s unique combination of fixed (painted glow in the dark stars) and mobile (elaborate, tilted, gear driven revolving dome). He rotates the DOME, not the stars. Motion is relative, but it introduces something I’ve not really had. I even once had this manifesto that said, my stars DON’T MOVE. But why did I say that, and why change it now. Why did getting this star revolving table set off new thoughts, a new plan. Could it be, at least symbolically, that our ideas get ‘fixed’ .. and we don’t want to change them?
I loved the stars rotating, and it instantly reminded me of being in a rotating spaceship - the stars don’t rotate, what you’re sitting on rotates - the ship, the earth .. Remember that scene in Star Wars IV (Episode IV first - its just good parenting) where the robots escape in the pod, and see the star cruiser rotating.. At first I thought it was too fast, but slow motion is the same as fixed - boring. This was somehow more invigorating, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t stop it to talk about things. Purist Alert - the next part may seem blasphemous. Then the idea came into my head to move the cylinder closer to the screen on the wall - something I’d never done before - it was always dead center. YES this introduces some distortion, but I had to make the mental leap that I was never going to depict the sky exactly how it was outside. For one thing, its by far easiest to keep the cylinder in ‘north pole’ mode, pointing straight up. Now the stars (with some distortion but a 3D effect) tumbled in and marched before my very eyes! I liked it.
But the curse of the medium wasn’t yet overcome - now the stars were too far away from the seats - so if the cylinder could move up, so could the seats .. Goodbye to the lazy boys, the metal chairs were back, 7 in a semi-circle, 6 feet from the screen… I realized in a medium size dome I was wasting floor space - room for only one row of chairs but not two. Wasted, like both my youth and my 401K. Now the rotating stars were close - IN YOUR FACE - it was exciting .. You wanted to reach out and grab one and take it home. Then the final revelation. Medium wasn’t the right size. It can’t be larger. But I could make it smaller, while retaining good aspects of medium and large .. I put a black vinyl wall right behind the chairs … now it seemed like an intimate spaceship .. And as a bonus, the back half of the dome now became a spacious backroom where all manner of musical equipment and storage could go. I could still operate off to the far side. Big/Medium/Small was mine.
I bought a rotating turntable for my star cylinder, and decided my 15 foot dome wasn't big enough, but lacked the charm of my old smaller 10 foot dome. So . I hit on the idea to cut down the size while keeping aspects of the larger theater.
How would it unfold? Well it revolves .. It REVOLVES around motion, ‘relatively’ speaking. I was struck by the guy in Minnesota’s unique combination of fixed (painted glow in the dark stars) and mobile (elaborate, tilted, gear driven revolving dome). He rotates the DOME, not the stars. Motion is relative, but it introduces something I’ve not really had. I even once had this manifesto that said, my stars DON’T MOVE. But why did I say that, and why change it now. Why did getting this star revolving table set off new thoughts, a new plan. Could it be, at least symbolically, that our ideas get ‘fixed’ .. and we don’t want to change them?
I loved the stars rotating, and it instantly reminded me of being in a rotating spaceship - the stars don’t rotate, what you’re sitting on rotates - the ship, the earth .. Remember that scene in Star Wars IV (Episode IV first - its just good parenting) where the robots escape in the pod, and see the star cruiser rotating.. At first I thought it was too fast, but slow motion is the same as fixed - boring. This was somehow more invigorating, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t stop it to talk about things. Purist Alert - the next part may seem blasphemous. Then the idea came into my head to move the cylinder closer to the screen on the wall - something I’d never done before - it was always dead center. YES this introduces some distortion, but I had to make the mental leap that I was never going to depict the sky exactly how it was outside. For one thing, its by far easiest to keep the cylinder in ‘north pole’ mode, pointing straight up. Now the stars (with some distortion but a 3D effect) tumbled in and marched before my very eyes! I liked it.
But the curse of the medium wasn’t yet overcome - now the stars were too far away from the seats - so if the cylinder could move up, so could the seats .. Goodbye to the lazy boys, the metal chairs were back, 7 in a semi-circle, 6 feet from the screen… I realized in a medium size dome I was wasting floor space - room for only one row of chairs but not two. Wasted, like both my youth and my 401K. Now the rotating stars were close - IN YOUR FACE - it was exciting .. You wanted to reach out and grab one and take it home. Then the final revelation. Medium wasn’t the right size. It can’t be larger. But I could make it smaller, while retaining good aspects of medium and large .. I put a black vinyl wall right behind the chairs … now it seemed like an intimate spaceship .. And as a bonus, the back half of the dome now became a spacious backroom where all manner of musical equipment and storage could go. I could still operate off to the far side. Big/Medium/Small was mine.
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