(Santa Fe New Mexican, 18 July 2014) – When Pull of the Moon, the land-based art project by Navajo artist Bert Benally and Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was completed in June in a remote spot in Coyote Canyon, it was only one aspect of a multimedia project that culminated this week in a reception at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. The collaborative installation was made for TIME (Temporary Installations Made for the Environment), a biennial series developed by the Navajo Nation Museum and New Mexico Arts. xRez Studio, a creative-imaging and visual-effects production company located in Santa Monica, developed a 3-D digital landscape based on Pull of the Moon that allows visitors to experience it in an innovative way — through the immersive experience of fulldome technology developed by Vortex Immersion Media in Los Angeles. xRez Studio utilizes high-resolution panoramic imagery integrated into 3-D software.
The Pull of the Moon project is the inauguration of New Mexico Arts’ newly purchased 50-foot full dome. Immersive domes, once primarily the province of scientific applications, have expanded in recent years to include a broader range of uses, including ones in the visual and performing arts. New Mexico Arts plans to make the dome available to artists and nonprofits and for touring in communities around the state. You can see it first in Santa Fe at Milner Plaza at Museum Hill on Friday, July 18, from 5 to 9 p.m. and on Saturday, July 19, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no admission fee. A 2-D version of the digital landscape can also be viewed by admission on a monitor at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (108 Cathedral Place, 505-428-5907) through Oct. 16, along with Bert & Weiwei: TIME 2014, a film by Daniel Hyde and Blackhorse Lowe that documents the collaboration at Coyote Canyon. Call New Mexico Arts at 505-827-6490.
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