Sidebar- The Invisible Universe CD-ROM
I had some opportunities to look at (and hear) Fiorella's astronomy CD-ROM, Invisible Universe, first during the evening of my conversation with her, and then later, after I purchased the CD-ROM at my local bookstore. (Note: you will be able to purchase just the music from Invisible Universe as a separate music CD, if you wish.)
My first impression was 'WOW.' She has assembled a stunning collection of images that rivals Timothy Ferris' images in his classic large-format book: Galaxies. In fact there are a lot of similarities between the two as far as information content goes (Fiorella's CD-ROM has perhaps twice as much text) and beautiful images goes (roughly the same number).
The difference between the above Galaxies book and Fiorella's CD-ROM is that Fiorella's CD-ROM is a much richer learning experience with her music, the hyper-links, her movies and guided tours, maps of the sky, and the astronomy poetry readings by other people. In addition, her CD-ROM covers stars, planets and other celestial objects, not only galaxies.
(Click on the picture for an expanded view. 46kB.)
While I didn't get a chance to go through all of the information presented, what I did read seemed accurate. Terenzi had the assistance of six UCLA astronomy grad students writing the explanatory text for each of the objects, so it should be up-to-date and accurate.
There was one aspect about her CD-ROM that I found most amusing. It was her Quick-Time movies. She makes her personal appearance in the Quick-Time movies as stunning as the images she discusses. Each of her appearances was a different look: a scholarly look in a business suit, an "evening-night-out" look in a red evening dress, for example. Even though I already knew something about her personal philosophy, (that is, of wanting to express her more feminine side, and that these beautiful celestial objects made her feel even more like expressing that side), I still couldn't figure out if her QuickTime glamorous personal appearances were an unconscious sensual expression of how these astronomical objects made her feel, or whether she was purposely trying to invoke an emotional response from the viewer.
I finally decided NEITHER and BOTH. She was PLAYING. I came to this conclusion after seeing one of her QuickTime movies where she appears as a disembodied head, floating from side-to-side on the computer screen, all the while explaining what was happening in the presented astronomical image. I was giggling the whole time her head was floating around.
So, in response to Fiorella's disembodied head in the CD-ROM, I created the picture below. I started with a Polaroid snapshot, taken December 26 of Fiorella and myself, and made us disembodied heads floating in a lovely background picture of the galaxy M51. This is for you, Fiorella!)
[Picture of Fiorella and Amara's Heads on a Cosmic Background]
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