What is home? The question seems simple until we consider perspective. Home is where we live, the rooms we inhabit, the streets we walk. But home is also the city, the country, the continent. And from far enough away—from the moon, from the perspective of astronauts who have seen Earth suspended in the blackness of space—home becomes something else entirely: a jewel, fragile and luminous, the only home we have.

Home, an interactive poster created by Strahinja Jovanović at Aalto University in 2021, takes this perspective as its starting point. The work is inspired by the first astronauts and their transformative experience of seeing Earth from the moon—the sudden recognition that home is not just where we are, but where we come from, the planet that sustains us, the only world we share.

In the animation, Earth is presented as a jewel. Its surface is not static but alive, transformed by turbulent displacements that open and close, shift and settle. These movements represent the voices of different people—the multiplicity of human experience, the countless ways we understand and inhabit this planet. The jewel is precious but also vulnerable; its surface is constantly in flux, shaped by the voices that rise from within.

The work is interactive, inviting the viewer to engage with this image of Earth, to watch as it transforms, to listen as the voices emerge and fade. The animation unfolds slowly, deliberately. The planet begins close, almost within reach, its jewel-like surface shimmering with light and movement. Then, gradually, it begins to recede. The distance grows. The details blur. The voices soften. Until finally, only an echo remains.

This distancing is central to the work’s meaning. Home, the project suggests, is not static. It changes depending on where we are. From within, Earth is everything—the ground beneath our feet, the air we breathe, the vast and complicated network of life that sustains us. From a distance, it becomes something else: a reminder of what we share, what we risk losing, what we must protect. The astronauts who saw Earth from the moon spoke of this transformation. They returned with a new understanding of home, not as a place but as a planet, not as property but as a shared inheritance.

Home invites us to experience something similar. Through the slow recession of the image, the fading of voices, the echo that lingers after the planet has receded, we are asked to feel the distance, to hold the jewel in our mind, to consider what home means when we are far enough away to see it whole.

The work reflects Strahinja’s broader interests: the relationship between distance and perception, the use of animation to explore philosophical questions, the integration of visual and auditory elements to create immersive experiences. It is a quiet work, contemplative, inviting stillness in an age of constant motion.

In the end, Home leaves us with a question rather than an answer. What is our home? Perhaps it is this planet, this jewel, this fragile sphere we share. Perhaps it is the voices that rise from it, the lives that unfold on its surface. Perhaps it is something we only truly understand when we are far enough away to see it clearly—and close enough to feel it as our own.