The Universe

The universe is vast and panoramic. The History Channel wanted a website to promote their television series, The Universe, that would be up to the task.

I developed the concept of an open site with no fixed navigation. Images fill the screen — uploaded directly from the NASA public domain library (thank you, U.S. government!). The images fade slowly in an endless slideshow, accompanied by my ambient sound design (proprietary secret: there are undersea whale songs mixed in there). The navigation is a thin translucent bar floating over the screen, following the mouse movement like a weightless object.

I created an original interactive game for the website. The player is shown the schematic of a random constellation. Then they navigate through space to find it. While browsing the universe, they will pass by nebulas, comets, asteroids, black holes, planets, and other constellations. When they locate the correct constellation, they will rotate the cluster using the mouse in three-dimensional space to align the stars into the classic mythological drawing. Houston, we have a winner!