REWILD Our Planet - An AR Experience

From now to 02 June 2019, ArtScience Museum visitors will be able to explore the forests of Borneo or dive deep into the coastal seas of Southeast Asia with REWILD Our Planet, Singapore’s first Social Augmented Reality (AR) experience jointly developed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Google, Netflix, ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands and PHORIA. The sensorial experience connects people to nature and one another through immersive storytelling that blends cutting-edge AR technology with stunning 4K video footage from Our Planet, a new Netflix original documentary series voiced by world-renowned naturalist, Sir David Attenborough, that launches today.

“Global wildlife populations have declined by 60 percent in the last 40 years due to unsustainable human activity, which impacts the very natural systems that our survival depends on. We need to not just stop, but reverse, the loss of nature. Bringing the challenges and solutions to life through REWILD Our Planet will help people around the world understand that they have a shared responsibility to act and protect nature. The powerful message conveyed dovetails with a unique opportunity to call for urgent action to protect the one place we call home, sending the clear message that it is no longer acceptable to continue to destroy our environment.”

--- Kim Stengert, Chief, Strategic Communications and External Relations, WWF-Singapore ---

Unlike these children living near the Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia where the environmental impact of their everyday daily lifestyle are immediately visible to them, most of our children today live in the cities and are far removed from the impact that their consumption habits can create...

REWILD Our Planet is built around four natural landscapes representing the last wilderness places on Earth:

1. Forests of Borneo and India
2. Oceans of Asia
3. Grasslands of Mongolia
4. Frozen worlds of the Arctic

Combining spectacular IMAX-style projections with spatial soundscapes and AR, the experience unfolds through the lens of the Google Pixel 3, where groups of participants can work together to build natural landscapes in 3D. They will unlock global weather patterns and magical animal encounters, ending with a deeper understanding of shared solutions and a meaningful pledge to act and help bring nature back.

Where there is no visual with the naked eye, a globe appears out of the blue when the phone is pointed in the right direction. The story of our planet ensues...

To vote, all you have to do is to walk towards the habitat of your choice. The sum total of all the votes will then be totalled on the screen to select the most highly-voted habitat...

Want to play your part to REWILD? Walk around the grid with your phone over the fields burnt for crops and palm oil. Magically, your every step will create a lush green undergrowth...

Watch it happen in these videos...

“REWILD Our Planet showcases how AR has the power to build bridges between people and the places they love. This evocative experience emphasises the connection between human beings and our environment. It generates a sense of presence and interactivity for every individual user. Building this exhibition with Netflix and Google and combining it with compassion-driven narrative from WWF demonstrates how emerging XR technologies will transform the social impact sector for good.”

--- Trent Clews-de Castella, CEO of PHORIA ---

REWILD Our Planet is located at the Inspiration Gallery at Level 4 of the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Open daily from 1000-1900 hours, admission is free. 

For more information, visit:

• REWILD.wwf.sg
• www.marinabaysands.com/museum/REWILD-our-planet

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San Andreas - Movie With A Fault

Singapore

June 2015

    

San Andreas is a 2015 American 3D disaster film directed by Brad Peyton. Now showing at major cinemas in Singapore, it stars Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and Paul Giamatti.

    

(Source:  Masti Movie)

   

California Institute of Technology (Caltech) seismologist Lawrence Hayes (Giamatti) discovers the accuracy of his earthquake prediction model when an unknown fault ruptures near the Hoover Dam, starting a series of earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault. Johnson plays Ray, a Los Angeles Fire Department helicopter rescue pilot whose family is caught in the series of earthquakes in downtown San Francisco.  
 

(Source:  Free Press Journal)

San Andreas Fault

This is real.  
 

Aerial photo of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain, a large enclosed grassland plain, San Luis Obispo County, 160 km northwest of Los Angeles...

(Source:  Wikipedia)

The San Andreas Fault, the major fault line running through California, is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 1300 km (810 miles) through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. The fault divides into three segments, each with different characteristics and a different degree of earthquake risk, the most significant being the southern segment, which passes within about 56 km of Los Angeles.   The San Andreas Fault is expected to be the source for the "Big One". It has on average a major earthquake every 150 years, but the southernmost segment has not had one since 1680, over 300 years ago. This is why seismologists believe that a major earthquake is overdue.

(Source:  Water Replenishment District)

 
The central segment of the San Andreas fault runs in a northwestern direction from Parkfield to Hollister. While the southern section of the fault and the parts through Parkfield experience earthquakes, the rest of the central section of the fault exhibits a phenomenon called aseismic creep, where the fault slips continuously without causing earthquakes.   That is mainly because the creeping section slowly and continuously moves, while the locked Northern and Southern sections remain locked. These stuck sections of the fault store energy like springs, slowly building up strain. When they suddenly unzip and slide past one another, a massive earthquake occurs.  

What Are Plates?

Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer shell is divided into several plates that glide over the mantle, the rocky inner layer above the core. The plates act like a hard and rigid shell compared to Earth's mantle. This strong outer layer is called the lithosphere. From the deepest ocean trench to the tallest mountain, plate tectonics explains the features and movement of Earth's surface in the present and the past.
   

(Source:  Wikipedia)

  

Plates at our planet’s surface move because of the intense heat in the Earth’s core that causes molten rock in the mantle layer to move. It moves in a pattern called a convection cell that forms when warm material rises, cools, and eventually sink down. As the cooled material sinks down, it is warmed and rises again.   Most geologic activity stems from the interplay where the plates meet or divide. The movement of the plates creates three types of tectonic boundaries: convergent, where plates move into one another; divergent, where plates move apart; and transform, where plates move sideways in relation to each other.  
 

(Source:  Ocean Explorer)

Divergent Boundaries

A divergent boundary occurs when two tectonic plates move away from each other. Along these boundaries, lava spews from long fissures and geysers spurt super-heated water. Frequent earthquakes strike along the rift. Beneath the rift, magma - molten rock - rises from the mantle. It oozes up into the gap and hardens into solid rock, forming new crust on the torn edges of the plates. Magma from the mantle solidifies into basalt, a dark, dense rock that underlies the ocean floor. With this, oceanic crust, made of basalt, is created at divergent boundaries.  

On land, giant troughs such as the Great Rift Valley in Africa form where plates are tugged apart. If the plates there continue to diverge, millions of years from now eastern Africa will split from the continent to form a new landmass. A mid-ocean ridge would then mark the boundary between the plates.  
 

(Source:  msafiri)

Convergent Boundaries

At a convergent boundary, the impact of the two colliding plates buckles the edge of one or both plates up into a rugged mountain range, and sometimes bends the other down into a deep seafloor trench. A chain of volcanoes often forms parallel to the boundary, to the mountain range, and to the trench. Powerful earthquakes shake a wide area on both sides of the boundary.  

If one of the colliding plates is topped with oceanic crust, it is forced down into the mantle where it begins to melt. Magma rises into and through the other plate, solidifying into new crust. Magma formed from melting plates solidifies into granite, a light colored, low-density rock that makes up the continents, forming continental crust made of granite, while at the same time, destroying oceanic crust.  

An example of a convergent boundary is when India and Asia crashed about 55 million years ago, slowly giving rise to the Himalayas, the highest mountain system on Earth. At ocean-ocean convergences, where one plate usually dives beneath the other, deep trenches like the Mariana Trench in the North Pacific Ocean, the deepest point on Earth, are formed. These types of collisions can also lead to underwater volcanoes that eventually build up into island arcs like Japan.  
  

(Source:  Wikipedia)

Transform Boundaries

A transform plate boundary when two plates slide past each other. Rocks that line the boundary are pulverized as the plates grind along, creating a linear fault valley or undersea canyon. As the plates alternately jam and jump against each other, earthquakes rattle through a wide boundary zone. In contrast to convergent and divergent boundaries, no magma is formed. Thus, crust is cracked and broken at transform margins, but is not created or destroyed.  

The San Andreas Fault in California is an example of a transform boundary, where two plates grind past each other along what are called strike-slip faults. These boundaries do not produce spectacular features like mountains or oceans, but the halting motion often triggers large earthquakes, such as the 1906 one that devastated San Francisco.  
 

(Source:  Wikipedia)

   
 

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World Environment Day - The Cove On Okto

(This article is part of Merlion Wayfarer's series on Animal Welfare.)

Tonight Merlion Wayfarer will be watching The Cove.

(Source : Wikipedia)

The Cove is a 2009  film that analyzes and questions Japan's dolphin hunting culture. Told from an ocean conservationist's point of view, and filmed secretly using underwater microphones and high-definition cameras disguised as rocks, the film is a call to action to halt mass dolphin kills, change Japanese fishing practices, and to inform and educate the public about the risks, and increasing hazards, of mercury poisoning from dolphin meat. 

(Source : The Cove Movie)

The Cove highlights the fact that the number of dolphins killed in the Taiji dolphin drive hunting is several times greater than the number of whales killed in the Antarctic, and claims that 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year by the country's whaling industry. The migrating dolphins are herded into a cove where they are netted and killed by means of spears and knives over the side of small fishing boats. Dolphin hunting as practiced in Japan is unnecessary and cruel.

(Source : The Cove Movie)

It was the Academy Award Winner for Best Documentary in 2009. 

To mark World Environment Day, The Cove will shown on MediaCorp's Okto tonight at 2200 hours.

  

(Source : WotWots)

... Related Reading ...

|   "Why You Should Not Visit The Marine Life Park At RWS"   |  

   

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The Deep Sea Mystery Circle - A Love Story

(Source : Inhabitat)

Introduced to life under the sea in high school through snorkeling, Yoji Ookata obtained his scuba license at the age of 21. At the same time, he went out and bought a brand new Nikonos, a 35mm film camera specifically designed for underwater photography. He devoted all his spare time - aside from his day job - to perfecting his art of underwater photography. Then, at age 39, he finally made the transition. He quit his office job and became a freelance underwater photographer.

(Source : Inhabitat)

But even for a man who spent the last 50 years immersed in the underwater world of sea life, the ocean proved infinitely mysterious. While diving in the semi-tropical region of Amami Oshima, roughly 80 feet below sea level, Ookata spotted something he had never seen. And as it turned out, no one else had seen it before either.

(Source : Inhabitat)

On the seabed a geometric, circular structure measuring roughly 6.5 feet in diameter had been precisely carved from sand. It consisted of multiple ridges, symmetrically jutting out from the center, and appeared to be the work of an underwater artist, carefully working with tools. For its resemblance to crop circles, Ookata dubbed his new finding a “mystery circle,” and enlisted some colleagues at NHK to help him investigate.

(Source : Inhabitat)

In a television episode that aired last week titled “The Discovery of a Century: Deep Sea Mystery Circle”, the television crew revealed their findings and the unknown artist was unmasked.

(Source : Inhabitat)

Underwater cameras showed that the artist was a small puffer fish who, using only his flapping fin, tirelessly worked day and night to carve the circular ridges. The unlikely artist - best known in Japan as a delicacy, albeit a potentially poisonous one - even takes small shells, cracks them, and lines the inner grooves of his sculpture as if decorating his piece.

Further observation revealed that this “mysterious circle” was not just there to make the ocean floor look pretty. Attracted by the grooves and ridges, female puffer fish would find their way along the dark seabed to the male puffer fish where they would mate and lay eggs in the center of the circle. In fact, the scientists observed that the more ridges the circle contained, the more likely it was that the female would mate with the male. The little sea shells weren’t just in vain either. The observers believe that they serve as vital nutrients to the eggs as they hatch, and to the newborns.

(Source : Inhabitat)

What was fascinating was that the fish’s sculpture played another role. Through experiments back at their lab, the scientists showed that the grooves and ridges of the sculpture helped neutralize currents, protecting the eggs from being tossed around and potentially exposing them to predators. It was a true story of love, craftsmanship and the desire to pass on descendants.

(Source : Inhabitat)

(The above article was retrieved from an email. Content was supplemented with photos from Inhabitat.com.)

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