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You'll be able to see the stars—light pollution be damned—at Prospect Park on Saturday, August 6th. That's when The Hubble Cantata, a virtual reality film paired with live music, debuts as part of BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. For the music, a 30-piece ensemble and a 100-person choir (as well as Met soprano Jessica Rivera and baritone Nathan Gunn) perform composer Paola Prestini's music with words by librettist Royce Vavrek. For the visuals, directed by filmmaker Eliza McNitt, all 6,000 attendees will be given a cardboard VR headset, which they can use with their phones, to take an immersive look at the Hubble Telescope's images of the Orion Nebula (you'll also need to download a free app before you go). It'll be the first event to combine a VR space show and a live-music experience for free, organizers say. To sweeten the deal even further, captivating percussion trio TIGUE opens.
The app will be available post-premiere for anyone who'd like to take a look at the far reaches of the universe but can't make it to the show—but really, Prospect Park, a.k.a. Brooklyn's backyard, seems like the ideal venue for this type of thing. You can support the project's post-premiere release at Kickstarter.com.