Planetary Observation Kit

After conducting scoping conversations with interdisciplinary researchers involved in Earth observation from across the world, we move from words to materials.

We created a physical kit to explore the following broad questions: How do satellite images of the Earth become meaningful? What do they make visible and what remains opaque or hard to communicate? How do satellites sensitise or desensitise different users and audiences to Earthly phenomena?

The kit makes it possible to explore these questions in a participatory, narrative-based and tactile way. Drawing on design-based methods of data physicalisation and exploratory prototyping, the physical kit invites participants to construct answers to the above questions by composing a material representation of planetary observation that draws on their own experiences of earth sensing.

The physical kit presents participants with a variety of visual and material elements that they can use build a "planetary observatory station.” Using their chosen satellite images or earth sensing data as a basis, users of the kit are guided through a step by step process to identify the defining technical, environmental, cultural, economic and political elements that compose planetary observation as a practice and architecture.

3 Steps for building your own planetary observation station

The kit was sent by post and provided participants with instructions and all the materials needed to build their own planetary observation station. The activity unfolds in three intuitive steps:

• Identify: Choose one satellite image (provided) or data representation from your work.
• Locate: Place a transparent grid and actor stickers to show who and what matters in your Earth observation practice.
• Perceive: Cut, layer, fold, or filter materials to express what becomes visible, uncertain, or distant.
• 📸 Then document – Take a picture and upload it [More details in the kit]

The activity is expected to last around 15 minutes.

Onboarding session

To help participants get to grips with the kit, we hosten an online onboarding session. During this session we guided participants through an ‘unboxing’ of the kit, presented its main components, and outlined the instructions for the creation of a planetary station.