GMU:Space Is The Place/projects/Voyageo

Some Background Information

Our idea bases upon two topics: The Innovation of Satellite Images & the Construction of the Human Body in the Media.

Our main focus is on the fascination of satellite images. Here you can find an introduction to remote sensing: [1]

And here are some interesting links to develop:

• Wikipedia: Space exploration english, deutsch
• Wikipedia: Cartography english, deutsch
• Wikipedia: Orbital photography english, deutsch

In sum, the satellite pictures offer a special perspective on the earth: <videoflash type="youtube">hH8UMbzgIAE|340|300</videoflash>

In concern to the photography of Human Bodies we especially dicussed the Individuality of everybody's external appearance. This is related to the individual appearance of the earth on satellite images.

People seem to be physically perfect in the modern media. But we know that is mostly manipulated:

• Wikipedia: Image Manipulation english, deutsch

<videoflash type="youtube">MFPGa0pKyTg|340|232</videoflash> So the question was & still is: What is physical individuality?
Wikipedia: english, deutsch

The Concept in the Process

We created the Website voyageo.de that acts as “Advent Calendar”, so that every day from the 1st of December until the 24th of December visitors could discover one picture there.

We made two photo-sessions with the projection of satellite images on human bodies & shot a lot of beautiful photos. After having selected 24 different themes, we completed the photos with written texts about geographical, historical, political or even individual information & published one a day. It was our aim to take the visitors on a 24-day-long journey.

The marketing for our website went into different directions:

1. We included Google-Analytics. So we had a detailled overview over the daily reception of voyageo.de.
2. We used our private (Email-) Network in order to spread the information about the online "Advent Calendar".
3. We posted voyageo.de in different topic-related forums of photography or geographics.
4. The “Advent Calendar” itself is a publishing format used to catch for recurrent attention. We thought the interest in our topic will be higher if people are curious to discover something everyday.

The Results

the visits on world map

most of the visitors came from Germany

35% of the visits came from referring sites

Our project was successfully running in December 2009 on www.voyageo.de!

According to Google-Analytics nearly 1.300 different people (absolute IP-adresses are meant, repeated visits are not counted) visited our website during the 1st to 24th of December 2009. We had in this time 8.802 pageviwes at all. The average of site-viewing laid at over 7 minutes. That's really long for the typically fast consumer behavior in the Internet. Most of the reactions we personal received from the recipients were truely positive. We had visits from Austria, Switzelrand, the Netherlands, the USA, the UK, France, Sweden, Argentina, Russia & from other countries. Inferential, our posting actions seemed to be successfull. Most of the visits were directly. So the use of our private networks & the direct marketing strategies had most influence on visiting this website.

Afterwards

The VOYAGEO project in its original sense is already finished.

Now we “cleaned up” the site. Descriptions associated to “Advent Calendar” are no more visble. The website functionings as a gallery since January 2010. All photo-text-combinations are still available for direct visitors, search engines & referring sites. Furthermore, people who visit the site still have the chance to contact us for feedback or further information.