THE GEOSPHERE PROJECT - 1988

“Two things prompt change, one is love and the other is fear...how can we love and attend to something we cannot see?” [1]

In 1989 Van Sant, “with associates from the scientific and art communities,” founded “the California Non-Profit Corporation Eyes on Earth for environmental research and education, and the GeoSphere Project for dissemination of the products and systems developed by Eyes on Earth. The GeoSphere products include the GeoSphere Image, the Earth Situation Room Network, the electronic Global Visual Library and the Global Ground-truth Monitoring System.” [2]

By the late 1980s, Van Sant’s “Space Trilogy” (Reflections From Earth, Ryan’s Eye, and Eyes on Earth From Space) had earned him attention and respect from the worlds of art and design, while his occasional forays into Art-In-Architecture provided funds; but all was not well for the artist. Accelerating environmental depredation and ongoing battles for global resources left him “in great distress.” In addition, his eyesight was deteriorating so rapidly that he would soon need a cornea transplant.

Van Sant was convinced that satellites could provide a practical tool with which to address global challenges and manage Earth’s resources. If, he reasoned, people saw “Mother Earth” behind the mesh of clouds, borders, and symbols that usually obscure her face, then they too would experience the rush of awe and love that astronauts call the “Overview Effect.” At the same time, the capacity to observe the planet would provide an educational and political resource. As the artist noted, “lobbying decision-makers doesn't work unless you can inform their constituents.”

Certain that the best way to initiate the project and achieve these goals was by collaging together cloud-free areas of satellite photographs to make a high-resolution “reality map” of Earth, Van Sant approached national organizations that had the necessary breadth and computational power. When NASA, NOAA, and the USGS all turned the idea down however, the artist realized that he would have to make the map himself. Then, when medical treatment on his eyes caused him to spend ten sleepless days in a meditative state, heimagined an even larger project for which the satellite “reality map” was just step one.

 Like Athena springing from the head of Zeus (as one journalist put it), Van Sant envisioned the multi-part Geosphere Project: an information and visualization system centered around the GeoSphere Globe, which would operate as a spherical projection screen for Earth information. The Globe’s base map, the GeoSphere Image, would be a collage of satellite photographs rather than the usual artists’ renderings, and Earth information would be sourced from the Global Visual Library, a custom database that would include near-real-time satellite data and communications from people on the ground, whom Van Sant dubbed the Global Ground-truth Monitoring System.

More than just a single globe though, Van Sant conceived of a worldwide network of Earth Situation Rooms (ESR’s), each with a GeoSphere Globe at its heart, where scientists, students, politicians, and members of the public could observe Earth’s systems in action and consider unfolding events. As Van Sant explained: “The Geosphere [Globe] will be a sophisticated "set" or stage for the animated depiction of global events...As seen by the viewer, the globe comes alive with animated visualizations of selected complex global systems and resource databases.” [3]