MADE OF STARDUST

Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm

Artwork Description:

In today's space era, a few wealthy companies exploit outer space resources like the wild west, ignoring sustainability despite its implications for Earth's inhabitants. We must raise awareness about the critical intersection of space, technology, sustainability, and humanity. Our human bodies are made of stardust, a reminder that our destiny is intertwined with the responsible use of outer space, which is essential to life on Earth.   MADE OF STARDUST is an interactive audiovisual installation consisting of a 35 square meter LED screen, soundscape and machine learning generating movies based on audience interaction and data sourced from scientific repositories, including NASA’s IPAC archive and the James Webb and Hubble telescopes.   The artwork investigates the cosmic, yet microscopic world around us. Stardust connects us to remote galaxies and to all things here on Earth. All elements in our bodies – iron, zinc, calcium – were created in stars more than 4.5 billion years ago. Even today, stardust continues to reach us. Every minute, tiny particles of micrometeorites, less than a millimeter in size, rain on Earth from outer space and carry remains of the earlier universe in the form of stardust from pre-solar times. While these particles are invisible to the human eye, they remind us of the presence of the universe on Earth and that we, humans, are made of stardust.   MADE OF STARDUST connects the viewer directly with their space heritage by transforming their face into an avatar made of thousands of tiny, shining stardust particles.