Finding Equilibrium

This new work-in-progress film interweaves personal stories with scientific documentation, resulting in three rocks being launched into space, only to return to a planet completely changed by a global pandemic.

A moon rock returns to Lunar gravity, a rock found during a Mars simulation mission gets to experience Martian gravity for the first time, and a crystal, holding my Grandfather’s last memories as he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, travels into orbit and becomes weightless.

On March 6, 2020, MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative launched a payload to the International Space Station with my three minerals aboard. The payload, “Sojourner 2020,” featured a three-layer structure which created three different “gravities.” Each layer of the structure rotated independently. The top layer remained still in weightlessness, while the middle and bottom layers spun at different speeds to produce centripetal accelerations that mimic lunar gravity and Martian gravity, respectively.

As the three minerals orbited the Earth 16 times each day aboard the International Space Station, 254 miles below, a novel corona virus also circled the Earth. My minerals came back to an Earth completely changed by a global pandemic.

This film is not only the story my acquisition of three rocks, their journey into Earth's orbit and back, but also the story of searching for evidence of existence, of our planetary future.

Finding Equilibrium explores our shared humanity in a time of profound uncertainty.

Source: https://www.janetbiggsfilm.com/