Most of us are probably never going to get up into space and see the earth from above—not unless you have a spare $200,000 to give Richard Branson. So we have to make do with Carl Sagan YouTube videos and NASA animations. The animation above, Formations by Syntfarm with sound by Brian O’Reilly, let’s you pretend, for a few moments, that you’re floating god-like above the earth looking down at the cloud formations and weather patterns twisting and twirling before your eyes.Syntfarm are a collaborative who say they like to explore “synthetic forms and spaces. These synthetic forms are created by transcoding various phenomena from natural environments.” And so with this short film they use Processing and real satellite images to create a surreal journey through the clouds.The meditative trip begins as you look upon an earth-like swirl of atmospheric patterns before it dives in deeper and immerses you in the abstraction of this simulated landscape. Forms slowly evolve at a glacial pace, as the camera shifts its focus from the macro to the micro and you leisurely travel onwards into a murky, alien world.Don’t expect any Felix Baumgartner-style thrills, but go HD fullscreen and you can happily zone out for a few minutes’ respite.[via Triangulation Blog]@stewart23rd
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