PROJECT

chikyu hakken

The series depicts three subterranean landscapes, set within cross-sections of the Earth.  

Inspired by Jules Verne’s novel Voyage au Centre de la Terre, the Chikyū Hakken landscapes are one of three interconnected collections – including Sequence Portrait and Costume Triptych – that reimagine the story as a parable for the malignant dimensions of the Industrial Revolution. Each collection explores a central component from this narrative.

Named after the Japanese drilling initiative “Earth Discovery,” the Chikyū Hakken present three diorama-like cross sections of the earth. Within several exposed underground cavities, minute expedition vignettes are faintly perceptible – both a nod to Edouard Riou’s intricate engravings for Verne’s novel, and an underscore of the microbial scale and significance of the unfolding human dramas.

The artwork features enormous computer rendered environments in which every stone, crystal, and character has been individually modeled in painstaking detail. Requiring a year to complete, a ten-person studio was assembled exclusively for the project’s complex digital requirements. Notable aspects of the production also included integration of data from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission throughout the digital geology (effectively turning the planet outside-in), and collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History, which generously permitted specimens from their rare-mineral archive to be photographically incorporated into the images.

The collection includes 3 artworks.

1st Edition, 1/1

Private commission.

MEDIUM Chromogenic & Pigment Photographic Prints

Credits

DIRECTOR OF R&D AND RENDERING: Michael Marcondes 3D MODELING: Alexandre Jacinto, Michael Marcondes, Fábio Pacheco Paiva, Joana Paupério, José Pedro, Hugo Peixoto, Romeu Pinto CAMERA OPERATOR: Harri Kallio GEOLOGY LIAISON: Cathryn Dwyre

design & production