🎵 Fly to the Moon... for just £5

Lunatick by Antony Gormley & Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan

Lunatick event poster (photo source: eventbrite event page)

“Our nearest neighbour is the Moon, and this project allows us to experience it as a found object in space, to explore its vast open spaces and swoop the ridges and valleys of its craters.”(Antony Gormley)

Have you ever wondered what's it like to fly across the galaxy? How about having your own private interstellar adventure? No heavy spacesuit required. Now you'll know, thanks to Antony Gormley and Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan’s first virtual reality collaboration called "Lunatick." Launched at The Store X, London on the 5th of April 2019, you can still make it to the lucky list and you live the full MOON JOURNEY experience until 5th on May.

What's Lunatick?

Produced by Acute Art, Lunatick is an interactive journey to the Moon based on real data collected by NASA. These geometric models will give you access to the most realistic experience, experienced live by only 12 lucky men. How incredible is that? All this for just 5 pounds (just like the song 🎵, only that it's a not a one, but a two-way 🎵 ticket ticket to the moon ). The name "lunatick" is derived from the Latin lunaticus (meaning "moonstruck" or "of the moon").

How do you create a vivid interstellar trip?

Gormley, one of the most renowned British contemporary artists active today, collaborated with Dr. Natarajan, an acclaimed astrophysicist and Professor at Yale University, to create an immersive experience. In order to bring the haptic experience of cosmic space as alive as possible for all of us, they treated the human body as a vessel free from gravity.

Dr. Priyamvada Natarajan said "I see what i do as map-making. And this is so fantastic since it allows everybody to look up at the night sky not just in awe, but with a profound understanding of what is unfolding in the universe."

For the creation of this immersive VR experience, Acute Art used multiscale modelling and recreated a wide range of objects, from tiny elements such as exotic flowers to the colossal objects of the Moon, the Earth and the Sun. One of the critical challenges was to scale and build a completely realistic optic sensation of the real size of an object, within the infinite scale of the cosmos.

The journey

You'll "take off" from a computer simulated island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. You'll have 5 minutes to explore the tropical habitat then break through the atmosphere, stratosphere, the asteroid belt into the OUTER SPACE. Your speed? 8000 km/s! You'll land on the moon and roam around freely, jumping up and down if you wish.

After a few good minutes, you'll be "fired" into the Sun, 4x the speed of light! The sun simulation is - yes, you got that right - based on NASA footage again. And if you're not very comfortable about being left by yourself across the universe, don't panic. Throughout the journey, you'll have your own travel assistant around so you can talk to them or ask questions.

Where? When?

Experience the Lunatick tip to the moon at The Store X, 180 The Strand, until 5th of May 2019. Admission is £5. Book your tickets here. Ready, Set, Blast Off!