Director Emeritus
Carolyn Collins Petersen, IMERSA Communications Coordinator. Carolyn is a science writer and producer of astronomy and space-science media for planetarium facilities, observatories, science centers, and Web pages. She is CEO of Loch Ness Productions, a unique multimedia production company. Her latest production is "Losing the Dark", a collaboration with the International Dark-Sky Association. She has authored several books on astronomy and planetary science, and more than 75 documentary scripts.
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Danielle LeBlanc is the Director of the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Science in Boston, and leads the strategic programming and vision for the organization, its infrastructure, and its award-winning staff of educators, producers, and artists. She has partnered with industry colleagues, university and government researchers, grant representatives, and other outside collaborators to position the Planetarium as a leading venue for accessible educational content and innovative experiences that push the medium across the boundaries of science, art, and technology. She has been enamored with Planetariums since she was a young girl and she considers it a privilege to contribute to the field and help realize the full potential of these incredible spaces for inspiring educational, artistic, and community progress.
Ms. LeBlanc has been working in the Planetarium field since 2000 and writing, producing, and presenting programs for the dome since 2003. As an educator, she brings over 18 years of experience developing and presenting live, interactive astronomy shows for Museum visitors, including school groups, families, general public, and adult audiences. Since the Planetarium’s conversion to digital technology in 2010, she has produced four original feature shows for the dome which have been licensed by hundreds of venues across five continents, translated into dozens of languages, and screened at international festivals. She has overseen and contributed to the production of numerous arts, music, and experimental programs that promote and push forward the digital dome medium, and which have seen tremendous success both in bringing in diverse audiences to the Museum and in garnering international attention.
Glenn Smith manages Sky-Skan's European operations from their headquarters near Munich Germany. His technical background includes electronics, sound, lighting, construction, architecture, and fine-mechanics, and started his dome career in 1985 at Spitz Inc. He later moved to Sky-Skan Inc. in 1990 as their systems engineer, tasked to further develop their turnkey dome theater installations. This just as theater automation complexity was growing and video projection was beginning to play a major role in planetariums. Long stints in Paris, Seville, and Munich fostered a love of Europe and after 5 years of building bespoke theaters around the World, Glenn relocated to the Munich area to focus on bringing American-style planetarium technologies to Europe. In 2000 along with Sky-Skan, they founded Sky-Skan Europe as part of Sky-Skan's global strategy. In the coming years, Sky-Skan Europe under Glenn’s management has gone on to realize some of the company's most significant reference installations including award winning pavilions at many World Expos over the past decades, as well as museum exhibitions, corporate events, and cultural installations to name a few. All in all, Glenn has worked on-site at several hundred planetariums and dome theaters around the world, including creating several dozen new facilities from the ground-up. Glenn is a passionate fan of the unique intimate environment of dome theaters, and seeks to support the format in all ways possible. He was first to bring true 3D Wavefield Synthesis Sound Systems to dome theaters where the technology is ideal for the immersive experience, and he helped organize the World’s first digital 3D stereo dome projection. He has organized early pioneering digital fulldome works using fisheye lenses and analog cinema cameras to capture content, and later with time lapse capture using unique hardware and multi-axis panning rigs. Glenn is a member of a number of international organizations and planetarium associations, and actively participates in workgroups and forums to further the fulldome format. Ask him about the immersive restaurant!
Ka Chun Yu is the Curator of Space Science at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. After receiving his PhD in 2000, he joined DMNS in 2001 as part of a team tasked to create planetarium software to visualize the known universe for the Gates Planetarium. He has performed educational research on how digital planetariums can be used for astronomy education, and has uncovered ways in which immersive environments are beneficial for learners. He has created extensive Earth systems educational programs through the Worldviews Network, a group that he co-founded, which uses immersive visuals to connect public audiences with ecological and biodiversity issues. His education and outreach is informed by the science of how people learn in immersive settings, as well as aesthetics and storytelling best practices from flat and immersive cinema. He has worked on space exhibits at DMNS, including its original Space Odyssey as well as the Space Odyssey Reimagined projects. He has had a production role in over 30 live and pre-recorded digital planetarium shows, has given over 400 public talks, and 100 professional presentations. He continues to work extensively to create new educational content and visualizations for the digital dome, and research the most effective ways of using this type of technology for education. In the past he has been involved with observational programs using the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as ground-based optical, infrared, and radio observatories from around the world.
Matt Heenan, director of sales at American Museum of Natural History, is responsible for the licensing of space show content both domestically and internationally, Hayden Planetarium and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, including Dark Universe, Journey to the Stars, Cosmic Collisions, The Search for Life, and Passport to the Universe. Originally from New Zealand, Matt speaks about museum and planetarium marketing at conferences around the world, and often presents to museum staff about how best to utilize Twitter and other social media (you can find him on Twitter at @mattpaheenan).”
Micky Remann is a German born media artist and producer of media events. He is Professor for Immersive Media at the Bauhaus-Universitaet Weimar, where he has been teaching the art of full dome since 2007. Micky Remann initiated the FullDome Festival at the Zeiss-Planetarium Jena, which he continues to direct until today. The international festival showcases and awards innovative productions in the genre of 360-degree audio-visual media and immersive fulldome theatre performance.
Micky Remann is also connected to another experience of immersion; he is the inventor of the “Liquid Sound” concept and installation, which entails floatation in body temperature salt water with immersive experiences of underwater sounds, lights and surround video images.
Micky Remann
Kulturdirektion / Liquid Sound
Wunderwaldstr. 2
D-99518 Bad Sulza
Tel. +49-36461-91021
Mo. +49-171-9749457
E-Mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.toskanaworld.net
www.liquidsound.com
Monica Bolles is an artist, audio engineer, and composer who brings together her love of digital arts, science, sound, and immersive environments to create and build experiences that question perceived duality in relationship to human nature. She creates live and interactive works for multichannel speaker arrays, fulldome, and other immersive environments.
Ryan Moore is the founder of Dome Fest West, Los Angeles’s first Fulldome film festival. Before that, he started Experience 360°, a Burbank-based Virtual Experience Design Studio that has been creating branded and narrative immersive content since 2015. Making an early mark on the VR scene, Ryan produced Experience 360°’s first immersive feature Speed Kills VR, staring John Travolta. Continue his feature-length immersive work, in 2019 Ryan worked with 5-time Emmy winner Maranatha Hay to produce the groundbreaking narrative fulldome documentary feature, Indirect Actions. Mr. Moore’s career within film production experience includes experimental branded content (Disney, Toyota, Cosmopolitan, GoPro), TV commercials (Pepsi, Jack In The Box, Tropicana), music festival coverage (Fuse Media), and Reality TV (Bachelor/Bachelorette).
