An interdisciplinary artistic endeavor that seeks to devise new modes of sensitivity, reactivating a common imaginary towards achieving an ethical collaboration with the atmosphere and the environment. 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.
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 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 Explorer sculpture and start exploring 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 Explorer 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.
Join Sasha Engelmann and students of the class GG3161 "Atmospheres: Nature, Culture, Politics" for a double Aerocene Explorer launch on Wednesday the 7th February between 11am and 1pm at Royal Holloway University, Egham.
Welcome all to explore buoyancy over the Italian alps; floating over mountain tops using only air currents and the heat of the Sun, and collecting atmospheric data as well as tracking the swirling trace of the Explorer.
Come join Aerocene in Australia while launching an Explorer in Lake Ballard. Collaborate with each other and atmospheric laws, towards a sustainable future.
On Sunday at 11am, against odds and weather forecasts, we will float over the skies of Rome, Italy, launching an Aerocne Explorer at Lago ExSNIA and declare independence from fossil-fuels! See you there!
Notes from Palais de Tokyo: Looking Skywards with our Next Generation of Creators Reflections on the value of running Aerocene
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
Inflamable has a voice Villa Inflamable, Dock Sud, Avellaneda 34°39’46.4″S 58°20’22.9”W Photo by Natalia Buceta LEER ESTE ARTÍCULO EN ESPAÑOL
New story: Free Flight at Schönfelde by Anna Guðný Jónsdóttir Þór Last Saturday, 9th of June 2018, two Aerocene sculptures
Bacelona, the Aerocene Explorer flies over the CCCB Barcelona, Spain: 30 April 2018 Only one day before the closing of
Citizen science Aerocene project hopes to put research into the hands of citizens By Johnson Huynh Aerocene Explorer Performance and
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
‘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
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
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,
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
How to grasp, in feeling as much as in thought, the promise of new forms of life in the air? This question, and the promise
During the period of modernity we got accustomed to the understanding of the human beings as determined by the social milieu in which they live,
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
