An interdisciplinary artistic endeavor that seeks to devise new modes of sensitivity, reactivating a common imaginary towards achieving an ethical collaboration with the environment and the atmosphere, free from carbon emissions. By collaboratively developing, testing and launching Aerosolar sculptures, Aerocene seeks to open up the imagination, un-tethering a new era of planetary attunement, restoring the thermodynamic balance of the Earth, free from borders, free from fossil fuels.
The launch pad towards this new epoch is an aerosolar balloon, a Do-It-Together (DIT) entrance to the aerial, whose engine is only the air and the heat of the Sun, floating as a result of temperature differentials between the two air masses, anywhere from 2 degrees up, without using any fossil fuels, helium, hydrogen, solar panels or batteries. Since its beginning, various sculptures and tools have been invented and world records broken in a move towards this collective vision developed by the Aerocene global community of artists, geographers, philosophers, thinkers, scientists, explorers, balloonists, and technologists and other enthusiasts.
In a world of tumultuous geopolitical relations, Aerocene communicates a message of simplicity, reminding us that the air belongs to everyone and should not depend on any type of sovereignty. It imagines a new infrastructure, which challenges and redefines an international right to mobility, reversing the extractive approach humans have developed toward the planet and re-examining freedom of movement between countries. This could be achieved by encouraging a bottom-up, participatory approach to policy making about the air, and through the activity of international community-building carried out by the Aerocene Foundation.
using no other resources than the sun
White Sands, New Mexico, 2015
The Aerocene Backpack (formerly Aerocene Explorer) is your personal tool for solar-powered atmospheric exploration: a tethered-flight starter kit offering a new way to sense the environment. Enclosed in a portable backpack is everything you need to float an aerosolar sculpture and start sensing the skies.
Designed to engage participants in thinking-through- making activity, stimulate imagination and creativity, and impart information about solar balloon flight, thermodynamic physics, meteorological science, and art practices in a multidisciplinary way, the Backpack allows participants to draw signatures in, of and with the air, declaring independence from fossil fuels.
Like all Aerocene sculptures, the the aerosolar sculpture enclosed in the Aerocene Backpack lifts off ground only using the heat from the sun, and floats without burning fossil fuels, helium, and other rare gases.
The Aerocene Backpack is currently being tested and developed by a passionate global community of artists, geographers, philosophers, thinkers, speculative scientists, explorers, balloonists, and technologists, and other enthusiasts.
Have you floated with the Backpack? Share your experience with us! Write to info@aerocene.org.
Mobilizing the Aerocene community of hackers, balloonists, dreamers, artists, and scientists to collectively lift off ground, we invite everyone to join this Saturday 27.10.2018.
Friday 26.10.2018 - discuss, think and listen with Aerocene practitioners, contributors and researchers with expertise in environmental justice, distributed autonomous organization, elemental philosophy, aero-acoustics, astrophysics and aerial history.
Join Aerocene to re-examine freedom of movement across borders and study the day-night atmospheric cycle! We will set free and recover two aerosolar sculptures from Helenesee at 8am and would love to have you there.
Welcome all to join Aerocene at Cambridge Science Festival at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on 19th-21st of April.
A chance to inspire change, and discuss ways to implement a fossil-free aerosolar infrastructure to cross-border transportation, Aerocene has been invitied to TEN-T Days in Ljubljana 25-27 April.
In the framework of the inauguration of the artistic / cultural project Franja del Río, Aerocene arrived in Rosario, Argentina, to carry out Aerosolar flights and activities.
TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD, LIFTED BY THE SUN AND SIGN FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM FOSSIL FUELS WE INVITE YOU ON A
Notes from Palais de Tokyo: Looking Skywards with our Next Generation of Creators Reflections on the value of running Aerocene
AEROREFLECTOR MANUAL The Aeroreflector invites a collective turn towards the most important energy source for earthly life, the Sun. In
Marble Breeze or the politics of the troposphere Created by Adrien Rigobello: Project Manager, Strategic Designer (electronics, cartography)Waèl Allouche: Creative
On Saturday 27th of October 2018, Aerocene community established a new worldwide record. Six passengers were buoyant with the air
Free Flight Archimedes & Aerides Saturday August 4 What would breathing feel like in a post fossil fuel epoch, and
During July 2018, Aerocene community was invited along Tomás Saraceno to participate on Fab City Summit, at La Villette, Paris.
Want to add your launch or innovation to this page? Let us know! Write to us at info@aerocene.org.
‘Air Crafted Architecture’ — Pierre Chabard
‘Saraceno’s Model of Models: The Magnificence of Aerocene’ — Kiel Moe
‘High Altitude, Low Opening (H.A.L.O.)’ — Sanford Kwinter
‘The fixed and flowing air’ — Oliver Morton
‘On the Political Influence of the Sun’ — Boris Groys
‘Piloting the Aerocene’ — Derek McCormack
‘I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone*’ — Olivier Michelon
‘Tianhe 天河区: Parables of the Celestial River — Jol Thomson and Sasha Engelmann
As society struggles to come to terms with the implications of antropogenic climate change, it is becoming increasingly clear that any adequate response will require
* from a poem written by Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘The Cloud’ (1820) In 2014, on the occasion of the exhibition “The Anthropocene Monument”, initiated by
High Altitude, Low Opening (H.A.L.O.)[1] Three–dimensional warfare is said to have begun in China in the first years of the Common Era with the practice
Aerocene: Becoming Aerosolar A collaboration between Tomás Saraceno, Visiting Artist MIT Leila Kinney, MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) Lodovica Illari and Bill
‘Nothing distinguishes me ontologically from a crystal, a plant, an animal, or the order of the world; we are drifting together toward the noise and
In our late industrial times, two weighty terrestrial infrastructures appear inescapable when becoming unstuck from the earth’s surface. Whether it is gasoline in propeller planes,
500 years ago the people of Louth, a prosperous market town in east England, conquered the sky. At the west end of their church, St
Tomás Saraceno’s Aerocene is astonishing for many reasons. Foremost is the degree to which his experiment manifests the salient principle of thermodynamics as the motor
