This work is based on a project I am undertaking for my final Thesis project for my MFA at OCAD.
I remember it so clearly. The boy scout troop I belonged to was on a three day hike in the mountains just north of Kingston Jamaica. It was the second night of our journey and we had stopped for the day. Since the night was clear and cool we didn’t bother with tents and just lay our sleeping bags out in a grassy clearing. Our fire had just gone out and the Milky Way was shining in the sky like a big bright neon sign. I lay there, exhausted from the day’s hike through the mountains, unable to sleep. The crickets were deafening and the last little crackling noises were coming from the fire but otherwise it was a perfectly still tropical night.
During the day we hiked under the hot tropical sun up and down trails and pathways no wider than our feet across a landscape that looked like a giant had crumpled up a big sheet of paper and didn’t properly smooth out all the wrinkles before throwing it into the Caribbean Sea. It was during the seasonal drought caused by the warm, dry, Trade Winds so our path was often dusty and the foliage was a dirty green in colour. By nightfall we had found a small clearing near a little village high up in the Blue Mountains. We got water and some food from a small store in the village and set up camp just as night fell. We wrapped up in blankets to protect ourselves from the 18 degree chill and chatted and horsed around as only a group of teenaged boys can after a long day climbing.
Which brings me back to laying on my back looking at the huge star-filled sky. Exhausted, but unable to sleep and surrounded by the quiet sleep-noises of my friends, the loud cries of the crickets and the soft crackle of the dying fire, I watched the sky. Suddenly, the stars seemed to jump and blur and in my exhausted state, I saw the sky move above me. It took a while for me to realize that it was the Earth below that was shaking, not the sky above.
This work is made up of small pulsating animations each of which represent a single earthquake that shook the earth within the last 47 years. They are being presented in such a way as to evoke the feeling of laying on your back and watching the stars. As each earthquake is added to the animation, information about it appears in yellow. As the user places the mouse over any of the pulsating dots, information about that particular earthquake is displayed in red. There are currently 28,685 points in this data-set. The data are from three sources: