The October program of Planetarium Nights at Scienceworks offers two different screenings – Black Holes – Journey into the Unknown and XYZZY – but note, due to the complexity of their topics and graphics, these after-hours shows are not child friendly. Anyone planning to take kids should be directed to the more accessible daytime screenings at the Planetarium including: Tycho goes to Mars and Starlight.
The first show in the Planetarium Nights program is Black Holes. But for those of us not astronomically-minded, what exactly is a black hole? According to Wikipedia, it’s “a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light and other electromagnetic waves is capable of possessing enough energy to escape”.
So, got it already? Don’t worry, you’ll learn a bit more about them in the immersive surrounds of the Planetarium, where sound and image are blown up in high-res sonar magnificence. Narrated by actor Geoffrey Rush with his calming and authoritative voice, the screening lasts for 28 minutes, and during that time you’ll get to see how a black hole is able to warp time and space and many other peculiarities of this particular phenomenon. Despite the awe-inspiring graphics and Rush’s informed delivery, this is a pretty technical show; those who are not scientifically literate will struggle to understand all the foreign terms of interplanetary movements and conditions.
After the Black Hole show, one of the Planetarium guides offers the audience a look at what’s going on in the night sky, as the screen starts to project various stars, planets and constellations. This talk is a bit rambling and could benefit from being streamlined.
The title of Black Hole is at least self-explanatory, but what on earth – or rather not on earth – does the title of the second offering refer to? XYZZY won Best Art Film in the 2024 Dome Film Festival. It’s a “psychedelic musical odyssey through a complex fictional world”. The best way I’d describe it is an unholy melding between a Magic Eye book (where, if you squint in just the right way, a 3D picture shows itself from random patterns) and the intricate artwork of Dutch graphic artist M C Escher.
Video director Simon Ward has transposed Jess Johnson’s hand-drawn illustrations into a trippy 41-minute video game aesthetic. There are smooth-skin mannequins, mandalas, tunnels, worm-serpents crawling everywhere, freaky human-beast composites, disembodied body parts, tumbling boulders, impossibly tall buildings, stairs that lead to nowhere… As with Escher, there are graphics that explore tessellations, depth of field, fractals, geometry, clockwork mechanism, mathematics, illusions and perspective. Each world presented seems stranger than the previous.
The images are matched with 90s-inspired electronic synthesiser tracks from musicians Andrew Clarke, Luke Rowell, Stef Animal and Lachlan Anderson. The combination of graphics and music makes for a surreal and hypnotic presentation.
Occasionally the camerawork is such that it induces dizziness so closing your eyes for a beat or two is recommended. For newbies to the Planetarium, another suggestion is to go early to find seats right at the back centre for optimal viewing (seats are not allocated so it’s first in, best served).
Who needs drugs when you can sit through XYZZY? It will give you the same hallucinogenic rush.
Read: Theatre review: BAD BOY, fortyfivedownstairs
The November program of Planetarium Friday Nights marks the return of the popular screening of Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon (best to get tickets to this one soon as they sell out quickly), as well as Ticket to the Universe.
Planetarium Friday Nights has screenings of two separate shows: 7.30pm and 9pm. Black Holes Journey into the Unknown and XYZZY will be shown in October.
