Interspecies Love Letter: Sky Painting for EARTH to SPACE
DATE
2025.3.29
LOCATION
KENNEDY CENTER
On March 29th at 9 pm, a gentle spring breeze brushed along the banks of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Over ten thousand spectators gathered from around the world at the terrace and riverfront plaza of the Kennedy Center to witness Interspecies Love Letter: Sky Painting for EARTH to SPACE—a large-scale outdoor multimedia interactive performance. Commissioned by the Kennedy Center to kick off the EARTH to SPACE: Arts Breaking the Sky festival, the artwork was co-created by Cai Guo-Qiang and his custom AI model, cAI™.
Interspecies Love Letter was a tender, poetic gesture to the cosmos. Inspired by the “satellite graveyard orbit” 36,000 kilometers above Earth, the project tells the story of a satellite named Stella that was launched to explore extraterrestrial civilizations, only to meet her fate in the graveyard orbit—a destined journey, yet one illuminated by interstellar love.
In this project, my team and I helped develop the story of Stella and Ethan using cAI™, and collaborated with the video director to generate clips and scenes that were edited into the animation Interspecies Love Letter. The video was projected across the river during the event, synchronized with pyrotechnics to bring the story to life. We also designed and built 32 sets of remote firing systems—in one scene, audiencs could interact with the whole performance by swiping their phones, triggering a real pink firework to launch over the river.
cAI™ & Cai Guo-Qiang, Animation Video of Interspecies Love Letter, 2025
Produced by E.I.ART and Cai Studio
Written, animated, composed, narrated, and voiced by cAI™; directed by Andrew Wang; edited by Shanshan Bai
Photo by Kenryou Gu, courtesy Cai Studio
Projection and fireworks. Photo by Kenryou Gu, courtesy Cai Studio
Photo by Mengjia Zhao, courtesy Cai Studio
Audience launch pink fireworks through the cAI™ real-time interactive launching system
Photo by Kenryou Gu, courtesy Cai Studio
Photo by Kenryou Gu and Masatoshi Tatsumi, courtesy Cai Studio
Cai said, "My curiosity for the blue sky and my dreams of the cosmos all began with the kites and paper airplanes in my childhood. Tonight, I asked cAI™ to help give wings to this paper airplane. Now, from right here, I will toss an A4-folded paper airplane into the night sky. I hope it will glide freely across the night sky, before soaring toward the unknown …"
My team and I also helped prototype and develop motorized paper airplanes with motors and was powered by cAI™.
cAI™-powered paper airplane
Photo by Elman Studio, courtesy of the Kennedy Center
cAI™-powered paper airplane
Photo by Kenryou Gu, courtesy Cai Studio