The Future Dome Needs Star Dome

IF THE ASTRODOME IS TO BE A PLACE OF LEARNING, STAR DOME SHOULD BE PART OF IT.

Star Dome is potentially an educational tool box, a community cultural canvas, and a platform for local visual creators, including kids. The Conservancy can commit to democratizing the content creation process for this imaging system, and making it accessible to every community, all the while organizing a robust internal content creation process and licensing team.

GREAT DOMES OF THE WORLD

One example of a project the Conservancy could take on, would be scanning as many of the world's other great domes as possible, and then projection mapping those images on the Astrodome ceiling using the Star Dome system. Our Dome is of course much bigger than any of those other fabled domes, so when displayed here they would be seen at a scale never before experienced. This project would check education content boxes of history, architecture, engineering, art and culture, while providing a memorable experience for tourists, and that all-important free global media coverage.

EARTH AND SPACE

Another educational application of Star Dome is astronomy and Earth sciences. With Star Dome comes the ability to project moving images of the sky and stars, or of Earth as seen from space, onto the 640 ft. "screen" of the dome. (Care does have to be taken to stay out of the HMNS planetarium's lane.)

COMMUNITY SOURCED ART CONTENT

The Conservancy could offer content creation camps or labs in the building, where kids-to-adults develop novel digital art, photos, animations and video specifically for projection mapping onto the dome. For tourists it could be more like a build-a-droid or build-a-bear workshop. Designs/projects could be voted up or down via kiosks and phone app. Special themed competitions could be held for mural artists, say, or flower photographers (think huge floral closeups)