Tomorrow was Yesterday
for The Buhl Planetarium
Carnegie Science Center May 3, 2026
Home Run Pictures
Carnegie International 2026
Notes:
We are indelibly tied to enigmatic realms of the sea floor. It's a connection made concrete from the minerals that infuse our infrastructure, the paradoxes that politicize our quotidian, and the geographic tragedies that underscore our impact. As our existence is intertwined with the ocean's depths, Tomorrow was Yesterday is an animation informed by the state change, distribution, and movement of water, soil, and rocks in extraction economies.
Questions:
How might these studies teach us more about the liminal space between being human capital and an autonomous liberated being forged by indeterminacy? Is there potential for intimate communion of the geological and historical past? How do specters take shape when the ocean floor is opened? How do geologic and human time stretch and fold on each other? What is the scale of sound in the deep sea? How is infrastructural animism useful while imagining more liveable futures? What of syncopations in new world-building?
The Short Animation
key themes:
-Extraction infrastructure.
-Scale and distance.
-Folding time and space
-Abstraction
Seabed Extraction
The story: We find ourselves the size of an ant crawling on the outside of a section of the sculpture. We make our way inside the sculptures and find Metapal and Ocean Loyalty inside, both embedded in one of the paintings. After we find our way to the seabed, we explode and morph into particles.
Questions: Can everything exist in fragments? Can there be a relationship between the macro and the micro that is non linear? Can we play with the sequence of the story?
Location: Columbus Basin to move inside the sculpture.
Subjects: Ocean Loyalty and MetaPal
Objects
Atmosphere
I had this sculpture in mind to begin, but we can discuss using others if we go this route.
Can the motion of our camera also travel through sculpture? How would this work with Fish eye cam?
We can choose one of these paintings to place one of the objects. Again, can the motion of our camera also travel through Painting? Can the flat planes become volumes we travel on or through?
Inside the paintings?
Movement and Sound
Subsea: This is a scorebook I made recently and am turning into a storyboard as I get the hang of this process. At the moment, it is fully abstract. However, it plays with movement and scale. I'm thinking about it as choreography. I'll be working toward a larger storyboard as our conversation progresses. I'm thinking about the rhythm and timing like a school of fish. That is to say, something that looks improvisational and intuitive.
I also plan to score the film. Please listen to a sample below. The sound, scorebook, and storyboard inform each other. I would love to discuss this further.
Seismic Days
I will be working on more storyboards as we talk through the sequence. Working my way to illustrations.
Storyboard 1.
Light
Sarah-Teng- Inpiration.
I have a question about color and would love to discuss.
Thinking about a limited color palette.
I'm thinking about things like height, depth and width.
This is a new piece I made in late 2024. I thought the groves might be a nice space to discuss.
Front Dome
