Mentor: Raoul Bunschoten

Co-mentor: Moritz Ahlert

The story of Gaia begins with the formation of organic matter or primitive life forms and their correlation to inorganic matter such as air, water and earth. In the context of looking at these layers of life through the prism of spheres, we could also abstract them into Earth’s different skins. The natural world created as a result of evolution, with humans being a part of it, would in this story constitute the so called First Skin of the Earth. The Second Skin is constituted of humanly made urban structures and infrastructures. The Third Skin is an intertwined hyperobject of both physical and digital dimensions. It is at the same time a hardware, software and energy based global system, which implies physical devices such as sensors, drones, satellites, antennas, data centers and even AI cyborgs on one hand, and on the other hand intangible worlds of data transferred in the form of bites or quants, depending on the computers used at the time of choosing.

Abstracted model showing the Earth's and Mars' Third Skin
Approximation of the World Network of Satellites compared to the Biggest Urban Agglomerations
Abstraction and Iterations of the Earth's Third Skin
Excerpt from the animation displaying the exchange of Data between Earth and Mars, co-author: Milica Petrinjak
Diagram of an Ecological Blockchain-based token - EcoStakeN
Diagram of the Satellite Systems Monitoring the Earth and Transferring Data between them
Third Skin Interface enables Immersive Experiences into Earth's and Mars' Third Skin