In Spring 2015, two aerosolar sculptures lifted upward from the ground using only the heat of the Sun, rising into the upper layers of the atmospheric envelope, to drift along the rivers of the wind. Travelling more than 500 kilometres, following thermodynamic currents from Germany to Poland over a period of 5 hours, the balloons were accompanied by a novel device: the Pecan Pico. 

This custom-built and open-source tool enables the geopositional tracking of free-flying aerosolar sculptures through the radio-amateur Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS). Hacking into its stream of transmission, radio signals have been intercepted and decoded into image. For the first time ever, the Recording Aerosolar series reveals the landscapes of atmospheric vision, as encountered by these aerosolar balloons, adrift on air, flying free from fossil fuels. The resultant prints depict not seeming malfunction, but the thresholds of liminal interference, proposing a new trajectory for aerial photography beyond drones and proprietary software, towards an open-source, eco-social mode of image-making.

The artwork series has been developed with long-standing Aerocene collaborator Sven Steudte, a German electronic engineer, private pilot and radio-amateur who authored the Pecan Pico. Aerocene is an interdisciplinary community for transnational collaboration, and an ecosocial movement towards an ethical realliance with the atmosphere. The open-source initiative seeks out dialogue with the energetic, immaterial forces that flow beneath the surface, between the cracks, above and throughout the ocean of air, in search of ways to nurture and mobilise the atmosphere’s radical potentialities.

Featured exhibitions

2024 | Complementarities, Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing, China.