When the daystar hides, wind-travelling social spiders are soon spinning their webs. Creating sails of gossamer silk, these “ballooning” spiders – a misnomer – catch updrafts, propelling themselves into a cosmic web of entanglements. From the Anthropocene to the Aerocene, entering orbits of a post fossil fuel era…

AEROCENE: FREE THE AIR. “Orbit-s” For a Post-Fossil Fuel Era (2022), an open-source virtual reality, invites visitors of multiple physical and cognitive mobilities to visually, acoustically, and sensorially experience an aerosolar journey, with the restricted manoeuvrability granted by true thermodynamic principles. Colourful representations of air currents generated from real meteorological data and computer-controlled fans indicate when you float in and out of equilibrium, feeling the wind when drifting upwards or downwards, the only axis of movement that you can control during a real aersolar journey. By looking up, you drop weight from your floating sculpture, feeling the air currents coming from above as you increase elevation. If you look down, you let hot air escape, losing elevation as you encounter wind currents coming from below. When navigating a wind current you enter a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, of stillness in motion, becoming one with the air. 

Today, there are 1.3 million people – entire petrocapitalist flying cities – in the air at any given time, with over 1 billion tons of CO2 released into the air annually. In a world facing a climate emergency, the dream of flight has become a nightmare. Through collaborative processes and open-source tools, the international Aerocene community makes carbon-free flight possible, achieving 32 world records with the communities of Salinas Grandes, Argentina for the most sustainable flight in human history. Active in 126 cities, 43 countries and 6 continents, the Aerocene Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to community building, scientific research, artistic experience, and education initiated by Tomás Saraceno in 2015, has floated over 8,000 minutes in the air free from carbon, for climate justice, towards an era to live and breathe in. 

Enter the era of the air at AEROCENE.ORG

Float towards an ethical re-alliance with the environment with the AEROCENE APP.