Cosmix

On Saturday, April 16th I attended the Cosmix show at the Planetarium in downtown Bradenton.  I drove 20 minutes to this planetarium with my friend Zach, really not sure of what we were going to go see nor had either of us ever been there.  When we arrived we came to find out the Planetarium is actually a pretty cool place, they have several different models of skeletal structures from all different time periods, including a completely awesome mammoth that was at least 20 feet tall.  This made me realize that I had never been to an actual museum where they had dinosaurs on display, and the nostalgia had risen in me, having been a fan of dinosaurs since I was a child.  Anyways, on to the Cosmix show.

We arrived just on time and walked into the dim room, lit only by the ambient light provided by the projectors that were displaying the video, and sat down into the chairs that reclined much further than that of a normal chair.  I was mostly expecting to see an actual planetarium show with the stars and planets displayed on the building's massive dome, and I was actually looking forward to it since I'd never been to one.  I was surprised to find it was more of small film festival type thing that made me neither happy nor really disappointed as I'd never been to one of these either.

The first few videos weren't overly impressive since, I work at a music store and I know a lot of musicians that write much more technically merited electronic music than what was on display in the videos.  Speaking of the first few videos they seemed kind of like windows 2000 screen savers with low polygon renders and low res texturing.  But then came on, “Thread Theory” which was a some what boring visual experience made infinitely better by the way in which it was displayed on the big dome instead of on a normal flat monitor.  What really made this one shine was the fact that all of the music was done by a live musician which I'm always a fan of, it wasn't the most technical of performances, but it was definitely a smooth sound that would fit in any ambient progressive listener's library.

A few of the other videos caught my attention as well, one of them by Trisha , I don't remember the name of the video, but her use of the screen's half spherical shape to signify the passing of mail across the different lines I thought was pretty creative and entertaining to watch as you recline back in your chair.  Another one that stood out was PJ's, being one that seemingly creating an anmation by a series of time lapsed still image captures from an entire night and compiling them.  Dr. Steiling's “Panorama” was one of the most interesting videos of the night, throughly enjoyed it all the way through and it's 50's vibe made me think of the game Bioshock in it's style.  The final video of the night “Take the ride...” was a stand out for me, especially using the planetarium as a medium the video was almost entrancing as it's kaleidoscope pattern kept increasing it's speed more and more until it was almost unbearable to look at any longer and then it burst away and displayed a very fitting quote by Hunter S. Thompson.

All and all I thought it was a unique experience and I'm glad I went, I'm also intrigued to go again and see an normal planetarium event there as well.

-Dan