Planet Earth As Art: The View From Space Presentation

This presentation asks the audience to consider planet Earth as a work of natural art based on a collection of images taken by remote sensing, Earth-orbiting satellites. The primary image source is the Landsat 8 remote sensing satellite. The presentation opens with an introduction to remote sensing and the image processing techniques used by the author to create the images used in the presentation. Several scenes of cities are used to familiarize the audience with the image scale, which is primarily 15 meters per pixel.

To make the case that Earth is a natural work of art, scenes of river deltas, dune fields, ice floes, periglacial terrain, lakes, rivers, mountains, volcanoes, glaciers, clouds, deserts, and sediment flows are used. Also evident is the contrasting nature of features (organic versus geometric) based on the geologic processes by which they were created.

All images used in the presentation were processed by the presenter. An example of one such image is that of the Bissagos Islands, located off the coast of Guinea-Bissau, shown below.

The length of the standard presentation is adjustable to between 40 and 60 minutes. The talk can be expanded to 90 minutes for those desiring a greater depth of background information on either the image processing techniques or the geology seen in the images. For an expanded version of the presentation, a live demonstration of the image processing workflow used to create a finished image can also be provided.

What started out as a presentation has evolved into a book project. You can learn more about this project at Planet Earth As Art: The View From Space.

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