The people behind “Space Explorers: THE INFINITE” want you to know that this virtual reality experience is next level in every way.
Even though you’re earthbound here on the big blue marble, you’ll still feel like you’re floating with astronauts and taking in the same images that only a relatively small number of space cadets have seen before as you wander through a state . -of-the-art, virtual 3D replica of the International Space Station (ISS).
Think of it as your own space trip, but all inside the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in West Palm Beach, June 4 through September. 2.
“It really is an experience like no other,” says Felix Lajeunesse, one of the co-founders of Felix & Paul Studios, the main production company behind the event. “There’s nothing else in the world like this right now. And it will be years before anyone else gets the chance to capture that amount of extraordinary images in space and bring them back to Earth.”
Shot over a period of roughly three years, from 2018 to 2021, the Montreal-based company produced more than 250 hours of virtual reality footage. Thanks to the compelling stories that result, you can walk around the virtual International Space Station (ISS). You’ll see floating spheres that, once activated, envelop and ‘transport’ you into a 360-degree cinematic environment captured by the astronauts. Each sphere shows you a different vantage point where the camera was in the real space station, so you can design your own journey.
A dozen international astronauts will also talk to you and share everything from how they work in a module to passing on their own experiences.
“This isn’t like a traditional, immersive show where you see projections on the wall,” Lajeunesse adds. “It’s a completely immersive experience … where you embody this avatar and you see the people in your group as co-avatars and you kind of recognize each other. And then you will explore this space world together. It’s not just another science center show about space. It’s an emotional experience. It will impact you.”
Admission to Space Explorers: THE INFINITE costs $45-$50 for adults, $35-$40 for students and $25-$30 for children ages 8-12. To order, call 561-832-7469 or visit kravis.org.
Here you can read more about the VR event in a Q&A with Lajeunesse.
QUESTION: Is it true that viewers can also take a spacewalk?
ANSWER: “After exploring the International Space Station, you will pass through a virtual portal and be invited to sit in the very comfortable seating that is there virtually and physically. So you sit in a real chair… and then you experience a 10-minute spacewalk, which was filmed outside the International Space Station by placing a virtual reality camera on the robotic arm of the ISS and the robotic arm followed two astronauts into the vacuum of the space while they perform maintenance work. It’s a very nice series. You can witness the astronauts, but if you look down, you see planet Earth in its entirety – the same view an astronaut would have. When you look around you see the movement and see the world as they see it. Nothing was imitated. It is what it is.”
Q: How did this all start and how did this win an Emmy Award?
A: “The original vision was to create a series of virtual reality series that would be distributed at home for people who have access to VR technology, which remains a growing but relatively small ecosystem to this day. When we started receiving the images from space and seeing what we were doing in virtual reality, we just couldn’t believe it. It was so special and the astronauts were so generous in opening the doors of the space station and their level of dedication and commitment to the project, they actually talked to the virtual reality camera on board as if it was a fellow crew member and you know, the feeling of this kinship, this intimacy that the medium offered. It felt so powerful. (Initially) we produced a four-part VR series called “Space Explorers: The ISS Experience,” which won a Primetime Emmy Award.
Q: Your website says you worked for NASA in Houston, but did you ever spend any time at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida?
A: “Leaving the virtual reality experience…there is a large-scale video showing the next steps of human spaceflight, the Artemis program. And of course the Artemis launches are done from the Kennedy Space Center. And so we traveled to Florida repeatedly to produce that footage.
Question: Can you explain how Florida’s contribution with the Artemis program grew out of the ISS program and how that is reflected in “Space Explorers: THE INFINITE?”
A: “The space station has been a human presence in space for twenty years. So people have been learning to live in space for a long time. And the vision of the ISS is, in a way, like camping in the backyard. You start camping in the backyard and when you are ready, when you have tested everything, you can go camping on Mount Everest. And so, low Earth orbit is considered the backyard compared to deep space, which starts at the moon and extends to infinity. The space station is located 400 kilometers from the Earth’s surface. The moon is 400,000 kilometers wide. And then Mars is 4 million kilometers. So none of what NASA plans to do with the Artemis program would be possible without the insights of the International Space Station. So we felt like we needed to connect the dots… giving the audience a sense of what they experienced with the crew on board. It makes the future possible and this is what the future looks like. All this was recorded at the Kennedy Space Center (Florida).
Q: You have this tagline for the show that goes, “It stays with you.” What does that mean to you?
A: “What it means to me is that ‘The Infinite’ is an experience, a profound experience in the sense that you get the opportunity… to experience looking at your home world planet Earth from the perspective of astronauts living 400 kilometers away from Earth. where you have this experience of the ‘overview effect’. Right now, maybe 400 people in the history of humanity have been in space and all the people, no matter where they come from, no matter when they did it in the last 60 years, come back and talk about what it feels like you look back on planet Earth. And witnessing how thin and fragile the atmosphere is. How fragile this ecosystem looks, how precious it looks. And then you turn around and realize that everything else you can see in the rest of the universe is dead. There is no life there that we can see. The moon is a piece of stone. The sun is a ball of fire. There is no life there. Life is completely focused on that little ball floating right in front of you. And there’s just a deep sense of connection. I feel like we were able to capture some of it. I will never claim that immersive technology replaces the experience of actually being there, but I will certainly argue that it is the closest you could ever get out of it, short of going to space yourself. And so people who come to see the show… they talk about it. They say it’s like, “I had this feeling and it stuck with me.” It was because the audience talked to us about the experience they had and then said, ‘Look, I want to go back and see the show again. I want to do it again because I want to reconnect with that feeling. I want to see more of it. There’s just something that stuck with me.’ We just thought we should talk about the show like that because that’s what’s true about the show.
Q: How did you get all this access to the space program?
A: “Before we did this, we worked with President Obama on two virtual reality projects back to back in 2016. We did “The People’s House” and “Through The Ages (President Obama Celebrations America’s National Parks).” We went back to Washington, DC, to present them to the people there. We started meeting with NASA managers who were impressed with the project. That opened doors. So we shot two episodes of what would become the Space Explorer series, which were filmed on Earth. And it just felt like the natural progression of that story, to continue the journey into space. We started socializing that idea at NASA and by the time we came up with a complete proposal and game plan for it, we had already been working with them for two years. And we had worked with respectable institutions before. We had a track record. We were serious people who wanted to do something complex. And that’s the story.”
