1990 - 1999
GEOSPHERE IMAGE MAPPED ONTO A DIGITAL SPHERE
BOSTON GLOBE APRIL 22, 1990
THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE COVER (ABOVE) AND POSTER OFFER (BELOW), JANUARY 13, 1991
PUBLICATIONS FEATURING THE GEOSPHERE IMAGE AMASSED IN VAN SANT’S STUDIO, C. 1992
VAN SANT DEMONSTRATES THE EARTH SITUATION ROOM TO EARTH SUMMIT ATTENDEES, INCLUDING US SENATORS AL GORE, CLAIBOURNE PELL, JOHN KERRY, AND JOHN CHAFEE AT THE RIO CENTRO CONVENTION CENTER, BRAZIL, C. 1992
THE GEOSPHERE STUDIO TEAM, C. 1992
VAN SANT AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH VICE PRESIDENT GORE, C. 1993
SUNERGY #9 ANNOUNCEMENT, SCREENSHOT
THE SECOND EARTH SITUATION ROOM INSTALLED AT THE HIMIJI SCIENCE CENTER, OSAKA, JAPAN
THROUGHOUT THE 1990S, VAN SANT WORKED ON DESIGNS, AS ABOVE, FOR A SYSTEM THAT WOULD ENABLE HIM TO PROJECT IMAGERY ONTO A SPHERICAL SURFACE AND THUS FULLY REALIZE HIS VISION FOR THE GEOSPHERE GLOBE.
JANUARY – MARCH 1990: When Van Sant realized that the GeoSphere Image would not be completed in time for a January 15th deadline, he returned the National Geographic’s seed money check. “I was dead broke and in debt ...I had set $70,000 in a separate account for Ryan for his education...when Ryan overheard that we... were broke (he was 10), he said, “Daddy, that money in that account for my education, is that mine?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “May I invest it in the GeoSphere Project?” I said, “No, no.” Then I said, “okay.” And that’s what carried us through.” [1]
After a year of intense effort, Van Sant and Van Warren complete The 4km GeoSphere Image, the first satellite picture of Earth in its entirety, but without the clouds and with no national boundaries.
Measuring 4,320 x 8,640 pixels at full resolution, it was the largest digital image made to date. The completed GeoSphere Image was printed and applied to a 6-foot 4-inch diameter sphere that Van Sant had already produced. This created the first tangible GeoSphere Globe.
“Not since the Creation has there been globe-making like Tom Van Sant’s GeoSphere. Not since Galileo has there been such a world of difference in looking at the earth.” [2]
In a March interview with Steve Nadis for Omni magazine, Van Sant explained that he was devising a way to project images onto a spherical screen. When it was finished, the GeoSphere Globe would become a projection screen for information drawn from a database of Earth information “for monitoring global resources and global change,” which TVS named the Global Visual Library. [3 ]
APRIL 15, 1990: The GeoSphere Image is made public on Earth Day, 1990. It is selected as the title page of the 1990 National Geographic World Atlas, adopted by NOAA, NASA and the United Nations, and, for a time, becomes the most widely distributed single image in the world.
On the morning of April 15, Van Sant and Van Warren showed the GeoSphere Image to the Stardent team. When Van Sant had left Van Sant for the National Geographic headquarters, Mike Garrity, one of the team, put the GeoSphere dataset into a program that drew texture mapped spheres. Garrity wrote in 2010: “It was the first time it had been mapped onto a sphere and he was out of the room at the time. Sorry about that Tom!” [4]
“Later they made some really cool 2-meter spheres with this image on them. It was sort of the earliest precursor of Google Earth.” [5]
APRIL 22, 1990: Van Warren appears on the front page of the Boston Globe metro section when he is interviewed about the GeoSphere Image.
JULY 1990: : National Geographic puts the finishing touches to its Sixth Atlas of the World, which featuries the 4km GeoSphere Image as its frontispiece.
“GeoSphere is a portrait of continents without borders and boundaries, a peaceful world that seems to belong to everyone. Even South Africa, Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka and Iraq look calm.” [6]
[NOTE: In contrast to the GeoSphere Image, the 1990 Atlas reflected “fast-changing international boundaries.” “Not since World War 1 have we seen such major changes in governmental order on Planet Earth,” said Gilbert M. Grosvenor, president of the National Geographic Society, when he released the new Atlas. “The consolidation of East and West Germany, the unification of the two Yemens, and the renaming of Burma to Myanmar are some of the changes cartographers made in the atlas, last revised nine years ago.” [7]
LATE 1990: Having completed the 4km GeoSphere Image, Van Sant plans a 1km version, in which one pixel will depict one kilometer on the ground. The intention is to create a more detailed Earth image into which users can ‘zoom.’ By this time however, Van Warren is “burnt to a crisp” by working a swing shift – days at JPL and evenings on the GeoSphere Image – in the context of Van Sant’s demanding approach.
“Taking a lesson from Tom's playbook,” he tells Van Sant, Al Hibbs, and Peter Lissaman that he will work on the 1km Image if he receives “51% of the IP rights to the project and derivative products.” The Eyes on Earth Board vote against this proposal at their next meeting, March 12, 1991.
OCTOBER 30, 1990: Tom Van Sant’s mother, Martha Van Sant Shephard, dies.
NOVEMBER 1990: Congress passes federal legislation to protect artists against the alteration of their work. As reported in the LA Times, “I’m absolutely delighted,’ said Santa Monica artist Tom Van Sant, the creator of a mural in a downtown bank building destroyed in 1982 by the new owners of the structure in a case that remains a prominent symbol of the plight of artists.
Van Sant, who testified in favor of the legislation in an unsuccessful attempt at passage last year, said on Friday that “this will be in service of the entire art community of the country. It is one of the most important events in the history of the relationship of the federal government to the art community.” [8]
NOVEMBER 1990: National Geographic Magazine includes a poster insert of the GeoSphere Image, which it describes as the First-of-a-kind portrait from space.
DECEMBER 1990: TVS interviews artist Rhonda Roland Shearer, co-founder with Stephen Jay Gould of the Art Science Research Laboratory, as a special program of ART/LA90 at the LA Convention Center
DECEMBER 31, 1990: At the 22nd meeting of directors of Tom Van Sant, Inc. the corporation resolves “that GeoSphere create the Global Visual Library and the GeoSphere Globe.” [9]
1991: Van Sant achieves an M.A. in Environmental Arts and Sciences from Goddard College, Vermont.
1991: Van Sant makes the 120-foot-long Pelican Wall for the City of Newport Beach, Newport Beach, CA.
JANUARY 1991: Van Sant participates in the exhibition Art That Makes a Difference at the Woman’s Building, Los Angeles, alongside Helen and Newton Harrison, Cheri Gaulke, Betsy Damon, Susan Gitlin-Emmer, and Mark Chamberlain.
JANUARY 13, 1991: The London Times Sunday Magazine features the GeoSphere Project on its cover and includes a purchase offer. Around 6,000 posters are sold in the first weekend. Van Sant uses the income to equip his Santa Monica studio with desks from the Boys and Girls Club thrift store and hire fifteen account executives to take orders for use of the Image.
As a result of the article, UK-based Peter Finch visits Van Sant and becomes European distributor for the Image.
“We did not make any outgoing calls but only took incoming orders. We provided no exclusive licensing because we wanted everyone in the world to have access to the image.” [10]
March 12, 1991: The 2nd Eyes on Earth Board of Directors meeting takes place at Tom’s Santa Monica studio. Financial reports show that TVS continues to underwrite the project, with a $188,000 loan to Eyes on Earth identified for 1990.
Senator Al Gore is announced as a new member of the Eyes on Earth Board of Advisors.
JUNE 3–14, 1992: The first Earth Situation Room (ESR) was installed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (aka the “Earth Summit”), in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At seven feet in diameter, the Rio Globe was smaller than Van Sant had envisioned in his 1990 interview with Steve Nadis, but it nonetheless had lasting impact on environmental policy and the technology landscape.
The only artwork at the Summit, the ESR was in an area that delegates from 172 governments had to walk through everyday. Van Sant and his team demonstrated the ESR to most of them, including the US Delegation led by Al Gore.
The United Nations purchased the first ESR as a gift to the people of Brazil for hosting the Summit. Van Sant formally presented the ESR to Brazil’s Minister for Science and Technology at a reception hosted by Al Gore. The ESR was installed at the Brazilian National Center For Space Research, Sao Paulo and open to the public in 1993.
1992: Van Sant studio team-members Erik Bruhwiler and Deborah Lackas became increasingly frustrated that Van Sant is not exploiting the commercial possibilities of the GeoSphere Image. At a team meeting they declared that, if Tom doesl not do that, then they will. Soon after, they took the Image data and set up Living Earth Inc, “which has been selling full-blown satellite images and animation of the Earth since 1992.” [11]
[NOTE: Other members of the studio team who were present at that meeting insist that Van Sant was shocked by the announcement and did not bless the enterprise. Rather, they and Van Warren assert that the Image data was stolen.]
[NOTE: Theft or otherwise, what is certain is that Lackas and Bruwhiler built a successful business around marketing the data. Including, around 1999, to either Intrinsic Graphics or Intrinsic spin-off Keyhole, which Google purchased in 2004 and reincarnated as Google Earth the following year. According to Van Warren, his work is still visible in the Google Earth base data.
APRIL 25, 1992: Van Sant is one of 14-artists who design and make original cups for a silent auction at Santa Monica’s Koplin and Sherry Frumkin galleries to benefit the Mural Conservancy of LA and celebrate the 10th anniversary of ArtScene.
1993: Van Sant visits the White House for a meeting with Al Gore. His son, Ryan, also meets the (now) Vice President.
[NOTE: A 1995 letter from Van Sant to Gore suggests that a key agenda item for this meeting was the “Global Ground Truth Monitoring System,” a component of the GeoSphere Project that VP Gore included in his plans for “Digital Earth.”
MAY 23, 1993: “China has its Great Wall, Newport has its retaining wall.” [12] TVS’s Pelican Wall is dedicated at 6 p.m.
AUGUST 1993: Speaking on The GeoSphere™ Project, Tom Van Sant co-presents a course titled Visualizing Planet Earth at SIGGRAPH ’93, the 20th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, held in Anaheim.
Fellow presenters include Jeff Dozier (Challenges In Information Management for the Study of Global Change), Peter Kochevar (Intelligent VIsualization and User Interfaces), Bill Hibbard (Interactive Visualization Techniques for Large Environmental Data Sets), Lloyd Treinish (Visualization and Analysis of Global Data).
AUGUST 1993: The 4km GeoSphere Image is included at Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, NYC, curated by Lucy Fellowes and Denis Woods. “The exhibition sought to demonstrate...[that] “all maps present information selectively, shaping our view of the world and our place in it.” [13]
NOVEMBER 9, 1993–JANUARY 25, 1994: The Power of Maps moves to the Smithsonian International Gallery.
MARCH 15, 1994 John Gage, Director of the Sun Microsystems Science Office and later the company’s VP, interviews Van Sant for Sunergy #9, a Live/Interactive Satellite Broadcast on “Creativity in the Digital Domain.”
His fellow guests for Sunergy #9 are Marc Andreessen, who is about to release Netscape Navigator, and audio engineer Philip V.W. Dodds, Executive Director of the Interactive Multimedia Association (who played a real synthesizer for fictional aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind).
1994: A second Earth Situation Room is permanently installed at the Himiji Science Center, Osaka, Japan
DECEMBER 9-11, 1994: The GeoSphere Image is the logo of the first Summit of the Americas, Miami.
JULY 1995: Van Sant’s Pelican Wall receives the AIA Orange County Chapter Honors Award.
1995: A third Earth Situation Room is permanently installed at the Toho Science Center, Nagoya, Japan.
APRIL 1995: Van Sant is interviewed for an episode of the PBS series Future Quest titled “Planet Patrol,” which “focuses on whether humans should adapt to the environment or reshape it to suit their wishes.” [15] Alongside Tom, participants are Scott Mathes of the California Environmental Project, comedian Dennis Miller, Peter Schwartz of the Global Business Network, Henry Kendall of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Body Shop founder Anita Roddick.
1996: The 1 km GeoSphere Image is completed at higher resolution by Silicon Graphics Industries (SGI) with Tom Van Sant. “Maggie Eastwood (Clint Eastwood’s former wife) made a generous donation to make the higher resolution map.” [16]
1996: A fourth Earth Situation Room is permanently installed at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, Washington, D.C., USA. (It is no longer in situ).
JANUARY 26, 1996: Van Sant gives an astronomy lecture at Santa Monica College titled The Earth is a Planet, Too.
MAY 18, 1996: Van Sant flies his Jacob’s Ladder centipede kite for the first time since the 1970s at Santa Monica beach. The event is co-coordinated by Jennifer Snyder, attendees include kite makers Tom Joe and Tyrus Wong. Oscar Janiger joins the group for dinner that evening at Taka Sushi.
[NOTE: In his book The Power of Maps, Denis Wood’s notes that “Van Sant’s brilliant map of the world” is neither a map, nor wholly Van Sant’s. Rather, it is a “portrait” that was impacted by multiple bureaucratic and technological choices made by NASA, LANDSAT, and Van Warren before Van Sant “even begins to fool around.” His point being that “even the most objective seeming” map can never make a “realistic view.” Instead, it serves to further the interests of the decision-makers. [14]
[NOTE: Although he is most well-known as lead production illustrator on the Disney film Bambi (1942), Chinese American artist Cyrus Wong was also a prolific kite-maker who shard a friendly rivalry with Van Sant. While Van Sant flew the enormous Jacob’s Ladder, it is said that Wong pulled a tiny kite from his pocket and flew that.]
1997: A GeoSphere Globe is installed at the Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, CA. (It is no longer in situ).
1998: Digital 3-D Earth, made using the 4k GeoSphere Image, is developed by Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) It is, writes Van Sant in one of his resumes, “the basis for Google Earth.” [17]
[NOTE: In addition to direct evidence that the 4km GeoSphere Image was sold to Keyhole by Living Earth, Inc. (see 1992 NOTE above), there is also circumstantial evidence for the presence of the 1km Image in the Google Earth basemap. In short, the makers of EarthViewer 1.0, “which could be called the true precursor to Google Earth,” included SGI engineers Michael Jones and Chris Tanner. [18 ] In 1999, Jones, Tanner, and others left SGI to co-found Intrinsic Graphics, a game-focused company that demonstrated their 3d software using a spinning, zoomable 3d planet Earth. A CIA funded start-up, Keyhole, spun out of Intrinsic in 2000. It “stitched satellite images and aerial photographs into seamless 3D computer models of the Earth that could be explored” and released EarthViewer 1.0 in 2001. [19] Google absorbed Keyhole in 2004, and under the leadership of Michael Jones, Google Earth was released in 2005.