Experiential / 2025

Black Planetarium: Uncharted Anthologies


Client

Kidus Hailesilassie

Scope

3D Motion, VFX, Compositing

Collaborators

RAW x Kidus Hailesilassie

Tools

Blender, After Effects, Adobe Suite, Nuke, Embergen

Tags

Art, Exhibition, Motion Graphics, 3D, Animation, Iconography

Project Summary

Black Planetarium creates a space for the collective rehearsal of other worlds shaped by Pan-African knowledge-making. Through breath, movement, atmospheric archive, and shared listening practices, the work traces the persistence of collective memory and imagination.          

Rooted in more than 5,000 years of Pan-African knowledge systems, this inaugural exhibition at The Music Center’s Digital Art Pavilion extends Kidus Hailesilassie’s ongoing research project, Ancestral Algorithm—a cartography of 6,500 pictographs, ideographs, syllabaries, alphabets, and iconographs drawn from twenty African languages.

All Projects

Credits

Black Atlas Map
        Large-Scale Wall Installation / Cosmological Field Map - Kidus Hailesilassie        

Oceanic Re-membering: Meditation Video Projection
        Voice Over: Kamali Martin
        Visual Effects & Animation: RAWx, Orin Torati, Santiago Ceballos, Luis Garcia Grech
        Installation Designer: Kidus Hailesilassie
        Site Production & Activations Coordinator: Aleyna Van Antwerp        

Virtual Reality Experience — Uncharted Anthologies
        Created By: Kidus Hailesilassie
        Co-Directed By: Kidus Hailesilassie & Ainslee Alem Robson
        Produced By: Liam Young, Kidus Hailesilassie, Ainslee Alem Robson, Aja Quinn Evans
        Executive Producer, Black Public Media: Lisa Osborne
        Choreography & Movement Direction: Elisabeth Efua Sutherland
        Performance: Harmony Adams
        Production Design: Kidus Hailesilassie
        Director of Photography: Sam Jiahao Zhang
        Steadicam Operator: Dae Hyun Kim        

Photo Credits
        Henry R. Jones
        Devin Wesley