Here's an interesting Hot Air Balloons news story. We first
heard about this from the
BBC
Website which includes a "Pictures Stories" feature about the Balloon Orchestra .
Credit: Sky Orchestra Photo by Thierry Grobet
This is all about a group of Hot Air Balloons taking off together (same
time and place) during the early morning. There are seven hot
air balloons in the group, each with speakers attached. They
take off at dawn to fly
with a planned/expected route across a city. This means that
the co-ordinators pay very careful attention to the weather, weather forecasts,
and
wind directions in the area in order to choose a launch site
on the side of the city from which the wind is coming. The wind then takes
the balloons gracefully over the city until
they land (not necessarily together - that's unlikely) on the
other side of the city.
During the flight/s each balloon plays a different element
of the musical score so that the combined effect is massive "audio landscape".
The Sky Orchestra is a collaborative project involving highly skilled people from very different disciplines. Luke
Jerram is working with international hot air balloon pilot Peter Dalby and composer Dan Jones. So far supporters of the project have included the
RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company),
AHRC (Arts and Humanities research Council),
DA2,
Fierce Festival,
NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts), and JVC, Motorman.
For further details of this ingenious achievement, visit the Sky
Orchestra page on Luke Jerram's website.
Oh, and if you unexpectedly hear music as you wake-up one morning, don't
worry - it might just be the Balloon Orchestra.
Date of this News Page: 22 March 2007.
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