Globe Cassus
Globus Cassus ( lat. Globus "earth globe" and cassus "hollow") is an architectural utopia , which envisages the transformation of the earth into a much larger, hollow and on its inside inhabited sphere of disk-like shape.
Globus Cassus is an idea of the architect and artist Christian Waldvogel , which he has been developing as an open content website since 1998 . Globus Cassus first found an audience in a conventional exhibition form in 2003 and was the official Swiss contribution to the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004 . The book of the same name accompanying the exhibition received a gold medal at the Leipzig Book Fair 2005 in the Most Beautiful Books from All Over the World competition .
According to Waldvogel, the “turned inside out earth” is an “ antipodal ” model that is intended to serve as a “playground to develop new, fresh and independent ideas for an ideal world”. (“ It is meant to be a playground to develop new, fresh and unrestricted ideas for an ideal world. ”) As an art project, it belongs to the field of net and process art .
Utopia
Globus Cassus resembles the hypothetical Dyson and Bernal spheres and is a hollow body rotating around its own axis made of 115 km thick, curved shells that form a highly flattened geodesic icosahedron with a maximum diameter of 85,000 km. Four towers of the equatorial plane ( space lifts ) extend diagonally beyond the outside into space, their opposite endpoints are 318,000 km away. Eight domed window domes allow the incidence of sunlight. The areas habitable for humans are located on the inside along the equator, the biosphere extends as far as the tropics . The centrifugally generated gravitation and the atmosphere decrease towards the two poles and are no longer present there. There are production and storage locations.
On a planetary scale, Globus Cassus is only slightly smaller than Saturn , the third largest object in the solar system . The surface of today's earth corresponds to only around 2% of that of Globus Cassus as a whole, or around 11% of its habitable areas. The earth-moon system does not change as a result of the conversion of the solid earth with a diameter of around 13,000 km into the hollow body Globus Cassus with a diameter of 85,000 km, since the latter is still within the lunar orbit and the mass remains the same, even if the shells are only Have 15% of the earth's density to expand that far.
The construct is made entirely of old earth material. Work begins with the construction of the four equatorial towers, through which the additional material for the construction of the shells is brought into orbit. The earth, which has shrunk through the breakdown, loses its gravity along with its mass. The waters go out, mix whirling with the air and patter down on the previously dry and airless hollow world, where they form seas, rivers and an atmosphere in the equatorial zones. Along with this gigantic weather event, people and animals also leave the earth, whose crust , mantle and core , water and air are completely used up, so that in the end the center of the globe Cassus, the seat of the former earth, is empty. The book describes this process in two ways. Once in the form of a technical representation, the other time as a metafictional examination of a memory "from the distant past" that has been transformed into the original myth called "Great Rain" on Globus Cassus. The form of society that has established itself on Globus Cassus is called “specific egalitarianism”, a “game-based social society that is based on a consistent decoupling of economic, political and monetary systems. The collective ego takes over legislation and decision-making. "
Artistic importance
The project is a pure architectural fantasy and impracticable. The temporal dimensions alone would be thousands, if not millions of years. Due to the occurrence of gigantic loads (gravitation, movement forces), a realization with materials imaginable nowadays is not possible due to a lack of compressive and tensile strength. The impracticability of the project and thus the impossibility of its conclusion gives Globus Cassus the status of process art .
“[The] artist no longer creates finished worlds, i.e. completed works of art, but maintains projects. This type of artist cannot, like the biblical God, step back nobly after creation, but remains in the game as a project maker. The realization of Waldvogel's utopia of creating a better world on the 'Globus Cassus' will take Waldvogel and his possible successors "several millennia." Waldvogel's project becomes a prime example of modern art. "
Waldvogel himself writes about his project:
“The most radical possible and most unrealistic position reference enables me, while questioning all the facts that are generally accepted as set, to have the most objective and unclouded view of the mechanisms and systems that drive our world. From the connection between mythology, physics, alchemy and jurisdiction to studies of social systems, geometric shapes and archaic human needs to the design of economic cycles and new living conditions, all facts that make up humanity are to be analyzed and to the principles established and to be established in the 'Globus Cassus' be adjusted."
The project's inherent purpose of questioning and redeveloping all areas of human life as far as possible is typical of net art , to which the project also belongs. Inspired by social science theories and social utopias, it is closely linked to ideas about social change and shaped by the enthusiasm for social and technical possibilities, as exemplified in Globus Cassus.
literature
- Christian Waldvogel (with contributions by Boris Groys , Claude Lichtenstein, Michael Stauffer ): Globus Cassus . Lars Müller, Baden 2004, ISBN 3-03778-045-2
Web links
- www.globus-cassus.org . There you can also find interpretative texts: globus-cassus.org , globus-cassus.org
- waldvogel.com
- Globus Cassus addon for Celestia
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ waldvogel.com
- ↑ waldvogel.com
- ↑ waldvogel.com
