SPHERE3

SPHERE 3

SECTOR A
Virtual reality art installation / video work, 2020.
3D graphics, world building, digital sculptures: Tanja Vujinović
Sound: LUZ1E and Mihajlo Đorović
3D models of asteroids (Eros, Geographos, Golevka, Mithra): Nasa

ISLAND
Media Art Sculpture (Sand, plasma-treated water, electronics, plexiglass, metals, 3D prints, LED lights, titanium substrate plates), 2020.
3D modelling: Tanja Vujinović
Objects hardware, assembly: Jože Zajec, ScenArt
3D printing: Tomo Per, RogLab
Hardware device development: Dr Luka Suhadolnik, Department for Nanostructured Materials, Jožef Stefan Institute
Programming and custom-made electronics: Dr Vid Podpečan, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Institute Jozef Stefan
Photographic documentation: Ultramono, Sunčan Patrick Stone, Miha Fras

PLASMONIKA
Virtual reality art installation / video work and media art sculpture (plastic, 3D printed objects, custom-made electronics, LED lights, plexiglass, plasma-treated water, metal), 2020.
Installation was commissioned by Finetuned Limited (curator Julian Weaver) and EUROfusion

3D graphics, world building, digital sculptures: Tanja Vujinović
Sound: LUZ1E and Mihajlo Đorović

PLASMA SECTOR
Virtual reality art installation / video work, 2020.
3D graphics, world building, digital sculptures:  Tanja Vujinović
Sound: LUZ1E and Mihajlo Đorović

Executive production: Tanja Vujinović, Jan Kušej
Coproduction: SciArtLab, Institute Jozef Stefan
Production: Tanja Vujinović / Ultramono

Consulting
Jan Kušej, Ultramono Institute
Dr Jelena Guga, researcher
Nataša Todorović, Astronomic Observatory Belgrade
Dr Lowell Morgan, Physicist, Kinema Research
Dr Vid Podpečan, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Institute Jozef Stefan

Tomo Per, RogLab
Jože Zajec, ScenArt
Dr Luka Suhadolnik, Department of Nanostructured materials, Jožef Stefan Institute
Arijana Filipić, Department of Biotechnology and Systems Biology, National Institute of Biology
Derek Snyder, researcher and editor
Julian Weaver, artist and curator, Finetuned Limited
Dr Gregor Primc, Department of Surface Engineering, Jožef Stefan Institute
Dr Rok Zaplotnik, Department of Surface Engineering, Jožef Stefan Institute
Dr Zoran Lj. Petrović, SANU & Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade
Dr Saša Novak, Department of Nanostructured materials, Jožef Stefan Institute

SPHERE 3 is a large scale virtual world built in Unity as a single user VR environment. It stages a controlled encounter with a synthetic biosphere where technological promise and ecological anxiety coexist.
The project unfolds across three interlinked constellations: SECTOR A, PLASMONIKA, and ISLAND. Together they form a speculative system rather than separate works. SPHERE 3 is not a fantasy of salvation. It is a rehearsal space for belief in technological redemption. It constructs environments where extraction, healing, engineering, and myth collapse into one continuous system.

SECTOR A
SECTOR A is a virtual futuristic garden composed of imaginary hybrids. Reactors, collectors, synthetic plants, capsules, asteroids, and a central fountain operate as parts of a closed digital ecosystem.
Fusion collectors harvest energy. Plasma systems condition water. Multifunctional capsules transport digitized biology. Gargoyle like regulators manage flow and distribution. Photogrammetry fragments fracture surfaces into prisms of data. Everything pulses, processes, circulates.
The garden borrows from industrial extraction as much as from utopian landscape design. References range from exploration sites on Earth to futuristic real world asteroid programs focused on resource extraction. Four virtual asteroids anchor the environment. They appear as double agents, existential threat and economic opportunity at once.
SECTOR A functions as a speculative infrastructure. It rehearses scenarios in which energy and water scarcity are solved through planetary scale engineering, while quietly exposing the extractive logic embedded in those solutions.

ISLAND
ISLAND translates the virtual AVANTGARDEN into physical space. It is a constructed biosphere composed of fountain structure, synthetic plants, nanotube coated titanium plates, and responsive sound systems.
One plant captures visitors’ voices, processes them through a neural network, and emits a subtle monoaural tone that modulates the atmosphere of the room. The central fountain circulates plasma conditioned water, chemically altered in a manner similar to lightning struck rain. Small disturbances trigger visible ripple effects, echoing ecological chain reactions.
Each unit converts vibration into energy and data. The installation behaves as a micro network that senses, filters, and responds.
Water is the conceptual core. Across classical Greek and Chinese cosmologies, water appears as a shaping force, a primary carrier of life and transformation. Gardens historically emerge around its presence. ISLAND reframes this lineage through synthetic systems, asking whether technological mediation can still sustain myth, care, and collective imagination.

PLASMONIKA
PLASMONIKA is an imaginary synthetic well and energy generator. It operates as both sculptural object and conceptual engine within SPHERE 3.
The work engages the promise of nuclear fusion as a proposed solution to climate instability and resource depletion. Fusion occupies an unstable space between scientific rigor and technological sublime. It is presented as inevitable breakthrough and as perpetual postponement.
PLASMONIKA imagines plasma as a circulatory force. The central fountain visualizes a future in which clean energy flows as abundantly as water. The gesture is deliberately literal.
The structure references the Rod of Asclepius, aligning technology with medicine. Tools are not moral. Precision determines outcome. The work insists on responsibility rather than fear. It does not ask whether we can build such systems, it asks how we will wield them.

PLASMA SECTOR
PLASMA SECTOR extends the project into an extraterrestrial garden formed from interstellar plasma clouds. Quantum loops, white holes, meteorite fields, and non carbon lifeforms coexist in unstable balance.
The work draws conceptually on ideas such as panspermia and the shadow biosphere, theories that destabilize Earth centered definitions of life. If life can arrive from space, if microbes can exist outside familiar chemistry, then consciousness and materiality are no longer fixed categories.
Biomimetic artificial intelligence and inorganic entities circulate without hierarchy, and recognition becomes uncertain. The work asks at what point a system qualifies as alive, and at what point familiarity dissolves into alterity.
PLASMA SECTOR expands SPHERE 3 beyond sustainability discourse into fundamental questions about life and existence.

Sector A, Virtual reality art installation, 2020.

Island, Media art sculpture, 2020.

Plasmonika, Virtual reality art installation and Media art sculpture, 2020.

Plasma sector, Virtual reality art installation, 2020.

SPHERE 3 References

“Europlanet Animations – Europlanet Society.” Accessed March 29, 2020. https://www.europlanet-society.org/outreach/europlanet-animations/.
“Nenavaden prizor: na Dolenjskem v objektiv ujeli flaminga.” 24 ur, Slovenija, Accessed March 29, 2020. https://www.24ur.com/novice/slovenija/nenavaden-prizor-na-dolenjskem-v-objektiv-ujeli-flaminga.html.
“TA1 Planetary Field Analogues (PFA) – Europlanet Society.” Accessed March 29, 2020. https://www.europlanet-society.org/europlanet-2024-ri/ta1-pfa/.*
Bailey, Lee Worth. 2005. The Enchantments of Technology. University of Illinois Press.
Benyus, Janine M. Biomimicry Innovation Inspired by Nature. HarperCollins, 1997.
Chorus Radio Waves within Earth's Atmosphere, Courtesty of Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) team at the University of Iowa, Nasa, ttps://www.nasa.gov/connect/sounds/index.html, Accessed March 29, 2020.
Evan Gough, Today Universe. “This Epic Ion Engine Will Power NASA’s Test Mission to Redirect an Asteroid.” ScienceAlert. Accessed March 29, 2020. https://www.sciencealert.com/this-epic-ion-engine-will-power-nasa-s-test-mission-to-redirect-an-asteroid.
Hanneke Weitering. “Giant ‘potentially Hazardous’ Asteroid Will Fly Safely by Earth in April.” livescience.com. Accessed March 29, 2020. https://www.space.com/asteroid-1998-or2-earth-flyby-april-2020.html.
Hester, Jessica Leigh. “Which Houseplants Should We Bring to Space?” Atlas Obscura, 24:00 400AD. http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/houseplants-grow-in-space.
ITER. “Cooling Water.” Accessed March 29, 2020. http://www.iter.org/mach/coolingwater.
ITER. “Fuelling the Fusion Reaction.” Accessed March 29, 2020. http://www.iter.org/sci/fusionfuels.
MasterClass. “MasterClass | Chris Hadfield Teaches Space Exploration.” Accessed March 29, 2020. https://www.masterclass.com/classes/chris-hadfield-teaches-space-exploration.
Nasa. “Models | 3D Resources.” Accessed March 29, 2020. https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models.
Nuclear Fusion: Revolutionary New Breakthrough. Accessed March 29, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlGzt9ur1bY.
ScienceDaily. “What Do We Need to Know to Mine an Asteroid?” Accessed March 22, 2020. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170919092612.htm. .
Todorović, Nataša. Asteroidi Mali Kameni Svetovi. Beograd: Astronomska opservatorija Gradska opština Zvezdara, 2019.
Wilson, Jim. “Nasa Audio.” Text. NASA, January 26, 2015. http://www.nasa.gov/connect/sounds/index.html.
Zaleski, Andrew. “Luxembourg Leads the Trillion-Dollar Race to Become the Silicon Valley of Asteroid Mining.” CNBC, April 16, 2018. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/16/luxembourg-vies-to-become-the-silicon-valley-of-asteroid-mining.html.

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