I realised how much I have to learn about weather ballooning while attending the UK High Altitude Society Conference where I was kindly invited to give a short presentation about my hopes to launch my own balloon to film at the edge of the earth’s atmosphere. It was also Helium’s birthday and a cake had been prepared to launch into near space.
I found much of the language of the day to be beyond my knowledge with many of the enthusiasts also keen coders and electronic wizards.
Still my presentation received a warm response and I am hoping I now have some contacts to call upon as I begin to get to grips with the logistics and add to my list of what is required.
There was a particular enthusiasm to actually launch a cloud chamber. This could be a first if we manage to achieve such a venture.
It is all a delicate balance of weight, helium and wind direction.
Wonderful to see the launch.
The really tricky bit is the tracking and retrieval. I’m not sure yet if they did get it back as I haven’t yet mastered navigating the websites let alone the skies.
In the studio
– work in progress for In Search of Darkness exhibition at Grizedale Project Space began with some tiny maquettes.
With valuable advice from John Purcell‘s team helping to choose suitable card I scaled up.
Added hand thrown acquatint etched starry skies
some screen printed dark matter visualisations and hand drawn star maps
folded with light pollution images printed on metallic c-type (from the print space)
and repeated 12 times to reflect the sides of a dodecahedron.
Out of the studio
– excellent afternoon spent captivated by Guy Oliver’s performative Songs of Eternal Praise for And You Thought I Was Bad at Zabludowicz Collection. Delivered in sermon style with attendant angelic voiced choir and backing musician; politics and pop culture collide in excruciating discord.
Enjoyed Lee Bul’s exuberant mix of materials from the organic to the industrial and all encompassing diatribe on power, politics and the decay under the gloss of idealism at Hayward Gallery.
Lee Bul – Willing To Be Vulnerable
‘I’m fascinated by failures, as well as by the dreams that the dreamers knew could never materialize’ Lee Bul
Lee Bul Thaw (Takaki Masao)
changing landscapes – brutalist concrete edifices – impact of an individual – held in ice – history returning – climate change
Lee Bul Heaven and Earth
Dark depths of the psyche.
Came across this obelisk out in Wiltshire. It is rather stubby and further prevented from piercing the sky by the tree that has grown over the last 250 years to embrace it.
William Eyres – we almost share a name and do share a birth day and month. Born at the time when the Herschel brother and sister astronomers were discovering Uranus and its moons; the moons of Saturn, infrared radiation and performing deep sky surveys. You died just before electric light spread its glow into the night.
Dark skies were yours.
Susan Eyre 