Inflamable tiene voz

Inflamable tiene voz

Villa Inflamable, Dock Sud, Avellaneda

34°39'46.4"S 58°20’22.9”W

Photo by Natalia Buceta

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El domingo 8 de julio, la Fundación Aeroceno en colaboración con Centro Comunitario Sembrando Juntos, ACIJ y el Blog Proyecto Riachuelo realizaron una jornada de reflexión con vuelos de globos aerosolares Aerocene Explorer en Villa Inflamable. Además de los vecinos de Inflamable, fueron invitados un equipo documental de la Universidad 3 de Febrero y el canal de televisión comunitario que cubre las villas de Buenos Aires, Urbana Te Ve.

La actividad surgió a partir de cumplirse en ese día el décimo aniversario del fallo Mendoza de la Corte Suprema de Justicia que trató la causa Mendoza sobre el sufrimiento ambiental causado por el estado crítico del río Matanza-Riachuelo y que ordenó la limpieza de su cuenca.

Lo que parecía ser una dia nublado con posibles lluvias intermitentes evolucionó en un dia con unos transeúntes cumulus nimbus y bastante sol, mientras se desarmaba una Sudestada sobre el Río de la Plata dejando vientos con rachas de 10 nudos.

Por la mañana, realizamos una recorrida por Villa Inflamable de la mano de un vecino conocido por muchos habitantes, Daniel. Recorrimos las calles mientras Daniel nos contaba de la vida en la villa y los problemas más importantes que aún sufren los vecinos. Se nota un claro abandono por parte del estado que toma un enorme contraste cuando se tiene en cuenta que esta comunidad convive con uno de los polos petroquímicos más grandes de Argentina. Es desconcertante ver circular una línea casi constante de camiones cisterna que abastecen de combustible a la megalópolis de Buenos Aires, atravesando normalmente todos los días por un barrio con necesidades tan urgentes.
Daniel nos contó que sufren el estado de las calles, un entramado de barro y algunas pocas calles de pavimento, y sobre todo la falta de servicios, como agua corriente potable, electricidad, gas, cloacas, alumbrado deficiente, la lista es grande. El estado a reconocido que el agua de red está contaminada y es nociva para la salud, armando a través de Acumar una red de distribución de botellones de agua potable. Cada una de las más de dos mil familias que habitan la Villa deben acudir diariamente a buscar sus botellones a un centro de acopio en la zona que habita.
La falta de una red cloacal es quizás uno de los problemas más acuciantes de la Villa, ya que los residuos cloacales desagotan en lagunas naturales que se encuentran dispersas por el territorio de Inflamable. Estas lagunas han acumulado basura de distinto tipo, domiciliaria e industrial y aunque aparentan sostener actividad biológica que colabora con el procesamiento de los residuos, son una zona de extremo riesgo para todas las enfermedades relacionadas a la presencia de larvas de mosquitos, como el dengue, el zika y la chikungunya.
Nuestro cálido guía, Daniel, nos contó que tiene 10 hijos, y al rato de caminar llegamos a su casa, un pequeño rancho con poca luz natural, sin puertas ni ventanas. Dialogamos con su mujer y algunas de sus hijas, que dibujaban con colores alegres en la mesa del comedor, con piso de tierra. Daniel actualmente coordina a trabajadores del plan de limpieza pública de la Villa, y aspira a poder construir sobre una losa en el fondo de su terreno, una casa de material con piso firme. Nuestra recorrida por el barrio terminó pasado el mediodía, ya que ya estaban arribando algunos invitados al Centro Comunitario Sembrando Juntos.
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Luego de haber organizado un taller de armado de globos aerosolares con los chicos que acuden las clases de apoyo escolar en Sembrando Juntos, fuimos ampliando nuestra red contactos y uniendo las sinergias de distintas instituciones que trabajan para mejorar la calidad de vida en la Villa. Comenzando por supuesto por Claudia Espínola, líder de Sembrando Juntos, promotora jurídica y reconocida activista por los derechos de los habitantes de Inflamable. Claudia tiene una maravillosa familia que la ayuda y acompaña en todo lo que hace, como su hija Rocío Luque que estudia Trabajo Social en la Universidad de Lanús y conoce las familias de la villa y su lucha por vivir mejor.

Otra llegada auspiciosa fue la presencia de ACIJ (Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia), que viene realizando desde 2010 una labor impecable en la Villa, desarrollando una agenda de propuestas concretas para el cambio y talleres de economía productiva entre otras acciones. También se sumaron los arquitectos urbanistas Gustavo Cañaveral y Adolfo Rossi del Blog Proyecto Riachuelo, quienes nos dieron una clase magistral de la cuenca Matanza Riachuelo y su visión de vías navegables turísticas y productivas para el desarrollo de la zona.

Vias navegables y productivas, la visión de los arquitectos Gustavo Cañaveral y Adolfo Rossi para la cuenca del Matanza-Riachuelo
Ezequiel Viggiano de Sembrando Juntos preparó unas riquísimas bondiolas y choripanes para un almuerzo lleno de anécdotas de la zona, recordando la historia y evolución del Riachuelo, y sobre todo, el paisaje ribereño previo a la actividad antrópica petrolera corporativa que lamentablemente se asentó en este barrio en forma de gigantesco polo petroquímico.
Finalmente llegó la hora de los vuelos! Nos dirigimos al predio frente al depósito de containers, ya que la Saladita de Villa Inflamable estaba llena de barro por las lluvias de la semana anterior. Volamos dos globos Aerocene Explorer, junto a vecinos de Inflamable, como nuestro guía Daniel que vino con 4 de sus hijas menores. Los globos registraron variables atmosféricas y un Aeroglifo, o firma en el aire. Estas firmas que describen el vuelo de los globos aerosolares son recopiladas alrededor del mundo, como firmas en pos de un compromiso ético con la atmósfera, por un futuro libre de combustibles fósiles.
Firmamos por un futuro libre de combustibles fósiles!

En un momento cargado de emotividad, la activista Claudia Espínola leyó un documento escrito por la comunidad, en el cual se reivindica el trabajo histórico de los activistas de Inflamable y la cuenca Matanza-Riachuelo y se reclama por soluciones duraderas para la contaminación ambiental. Fueron recordadas, por no poder estar presentes, Fueron recordadas, por no poder estar presentes, lla antropóloga nacida en Inflamable Débora Swistun -quien escribió el famoso libro Inflamable, Estudio del sufrimiento ambiental, quien trabaja en distintas iniciativas ambientales y nos facilitó conocer Sembrando Juntos- y Beatriz Mendoza -impulsora que de la causa colectiva sobre la que falló la Corte Suprema, que lleva su nombre.

El grupo de vecinos, instituciones, voluntarios y niños que se reunión a reflexionar en esta jornada no solo logró ese objetivo, sino que además, quedó flotando en el aire un marcado sentimiento de hermandad, colaboración y solidaridad. Esos valores nos guían, en la búsqueda de una mejor calidad de vida para las 2000 familias de Villa Inflamable. Nuestras acciones futuras se orientan a continuar acompañando esta valiosa comunidad, y una serie de acciones concretas para lograr suplir alguna necesidad de los vecinos. Porque como reflexiona Claudia: “Inflamable tiene Voz”.

 

Fotos por Gabriela Sorbi, Natalia Buceta, Jimena Rodriguez Berisso y Margarita Ezcurra

High Altitude, Low Opening (H.A.L.O.)

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 of manned flight on massive kites to reconnoiter enemy movements.[2] Perhaps more plausibly, kites were reportedly used by the Chinese as battlefield signaling systems, while the most vivid story of all recounts the use of an Aeolian kite designed to produce unearthly sounds when launched in the dead of night over the enemy camp during a famous battle of the early Han Dynasty, a gambit that successfully frightened the opposing army off.[3] It took nearly 2000 years from the dawn of the kite era until the physical and behavioral properties of gases were well enough noticed for the Montgolfier brothers to concoct the great “globes aerostatiques” that found experimental deployment in the Napoleonic Wars. Yet the first militarily effective use of balloons arrived only with the American Civil War although even here, as in the cases above, the airships in question remained tethered rather than released in free flight. Controlled aeronautics in fact makes its entrance in sky history only with the rise of machine aviation in the early 20th century—first with propeller aircraft, and later in the form of guided missiles of all kinds. Today, in yet a further phase in this indeterminate history, we see emerging the soon–to–be–ubiquitous phenomenon of the unmanned, remote– or automatically–piloted drone. And yet fully controlled flight is not the summit ambition of our modernity. Deeper still, and possessing an even greater magical hold on the imagination, has been the thermodynamic fantasy of achieving propulsive motion, or action of any kind, by agency of a ‘work–for–free’ mechanism.[4]

Entropy, it is true, never decreases, but this does not mean that the strategy of moving it around is either expensive (energetically or temporally) or does not itself constitute an engine of a peculiarly magical kind. In fact, it is the very nature and fact of entropy’s dynamism that affords a landscape of unfamiliar pathways and opportunities rarely grasped fully by the modern technological imagination trained and compelled to seek advantage only in ‘take–what–you–want–and–pay–for–it’ setups where the rule of the ledger sheet and the balance book holds sway. In other words, the simple fact that potential of one type (in this case, energy) endlessly and ineluctably decreases, migrates or transforms in any free environment does not mean new and different potentials are not continuously generated elsewhere as a direct result of these very developments. For the relentless cleaving and changing of the universe’s ‘matter flow’ establishes the rule of the differential in nature, and following from it the irrepressible reality of the gradient without which nothing would ever happen, and thanks to which so many great things not yet imagined, easily could.

Once, importantly, in the middle of the last century, the discrepant model of the clock was opposed to that of the cloud with a view to re-connecting thought to the empirical outcomes of actual nature, and away from the controlled and artificial conditions of the laboratory setting.[5] Today the logic most wondrously sensed and tapped by inventors, dreamers, scientists and makers of speculative—read plastic and sensuous—work, is that of weather, a system of unceasing innovation, in which nothing is wasted, in which no component fails to assert its influence, and in which, despite the abundance of behaviors and forms it throws up, no causes are dissociable from their effects. The attraction here, in the words that Karl Popper once used to describe something pretty close to it, resides in the idea of “plastic controls” that not only accept but actually celebrate indeterminacy in the temporal form world, that relinquish the hard control of our rationalist (read here ‘mechanist’) traditions. Today we are increasingly seeing the pervasive gradient/differential in nature as the wellspring of form and of the work equations that produce it.[6]

For all these reasons—indeed because of this overarching trend in historical ontology—sky has become a place, a plenum, a place to move and think differently, indeed it is becoming both a mode of thought itself and the foundation of an emerging ethos or system of ethoi.

Sky is an ocean (as Buckminster Fuller used to proselytize) only here it is one just as replete as the aqueous one around and below us that is awash with currents, strata, weather systems, differentials of density, temperature, direction, humidity, pressure and their shifting, always provisional and developing correlations. It is a system that generates singularities (points where qualitative changes occur) and tendencies at every moment and in every place. But here is the ironclad rule that governs: Nature always reduces the gradient (the inescapable Second Law applied now to every manifestation of form).

The simple process by which it works is no other than this: energy flows from higher, hotter, and denser to lower, cooler, and rarer. To sublimate the gradient nature sets into motion a flow. These flows, in sum, are today what matter more. One no longer concerns oneself solely with absolute values that represent averages of uneven distributions or conversely with isolated and discontinuous points. These flows and their reductions are becoming at once the stuff of science and of the ecological and artistic imagination alike.

The Aerocene, it might be said, is the name of a new ecological space that grasps into unity both the scientific and the artistic imagination and the neurological apparatus itself.  For it targets primarily an attitude of sensing energy, sensing potential, sensing in a vast and only apparent void what the ancient Chinese geomancers, ink wash painters and military strategists referred to as ‘shi’—the inbuilt propensity of any situation, position, or configuration to develop (flow) in a specific direction and in a certain way.[7]  Every moment flows into the next and every place abets or resists this flow in just the manner that is specific to it. When prehended together these variables form an ocean of particularities rife with harvestable action and energy.

A critical and moving component in the perception-confounding launch of a colossal airship like the Aerosolar is the assembly of a membrane from supermarket tote bags whose function is to establish the paltriest of separations between an inner and outer atmosphere. The fragility of the surrounding film is sufficient nonetheless to both delay and capture the impetus toward thermal equilibrium that no force or thing can forever escape, and in so doing to convert it for a time—perhaps for a very long time indeed—into manifest, even sublime semi-directed motion.  What is pitched into aesthetic relief here in a way that would be entirely familiar to late 19th century (embryological) biologists and 1980’s (nonlinear) mathematicians alike, is the salience of what is known as the separatrix, the marvelously subtle boundary point or line between two or more valleys and on which a process precariously hangs before it is forced to choose a direction of motion or fall. A ball for example can balance only for so long on a pinnacle or crest before it must yield to the infinitesimal atmospheric imbalances that set it fleeing to one of its several topographical destinies. But the ball can be said, in the moments before the system ‘breaks’ or launches, to be in a state of infinite sensitive search. Its job is to sense gradients. This is the physics and politics of the ‘aerocene’.

The bladder inflates slowly to claim a vast parcel of the air ocean. The solar stream courses onto and through it as the various component materials convert light energy into units of heat. The internal numbers build like steam in a locomotive chamber, but the expanses here are so vast that the tiniest differential in centigrade measures results in exponential expansion—so much less pressure than required by the iron horses of yesteryear yet in service of so much more startling effect. It is of course not the difference in temperature, but the consequent ones of dilation, displacement and relative weight that induce, at one threshold moment and no other, the liftoff and rise. The drama plays out at such gigantic scale all while connected to a variable so meager and demure that the spectacle simply fails to read as physics at all.

But then that is presumably why we have come: to bear witness to the singing of a new era in technics, sensation, and knowledge in the face of which the dogmas that for long subtended thought and behavior in a presumed universe of grave and fixed things, now fall or, shall we say, now melt into air.

— Sanford Kwinter

Notes:

[1]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_military_parachuting

[2] John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War (London: University College London Press, 1999), 22-23.

[3] Berthold Laufer, “The Prehistory of Aviation,” Field Museum of Natural History, Vol. 18(1)(1928): 34.

[4] The concept of ‘work for free’ dates back to a thought experiment devised by James Clerk Maxwell in his 1872 Theory of Heat that Lord Kelvin later memorialized as “Maxwell’s Demon”.  In the experiment in question a sentient agent is posited who has the ability to control the passage of molecules from one chamber to the other simply by recognizing which are fast and which are slow and letting the slow pass into one chamber and the fast into the other. In this a way the warm are sequestered from the cool and without adding heat, energy or work their migrations will have brought about an increase in the temperature of one part of the system and a cooler one in the other—hence flagrantly contradicting the Second Law. The idea of work for free, despite the objections legitimately raised regarding the cost of the demon’s presence and labors, has been endlessly and equally legitimately hypothetically revived by practitioners such as Leo Szilard (Szilard engine) in physics, and Stuart Kaufmann (“order for free”) in biology. The Second Law may be globally inviolable but probing its many defects and open flanks at a variety of sub-global scales has proven consistently fruitful for both science and thought.

[5]  Karl Popper, “Of Clocks and Clouds: An Approach to the Problem of Rationality and the Freedom of Man” in Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972) (original: 1965).

[6]  Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics, and Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

[7]  Francois Jullien, La Propension des Choses (1992) translated as On the Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China (New York: Zone Books, 1995).

Notes from Palais de Tokyo

Notes from Palais de Tokyo: Looking Skywards with our Next Generation of Creators

Reflections on the value of running Aerocene workshops with children.

By Grace Pappas

So much inspiration. So much excitement. So much was felt amongst our youngest of Aeronauts.

Children. Give them some materials, some space in and they will create their own worlds to completely immerse themselves within in no time. They take what you give them and use it as material to weave brilliant worlds of imagination. We speak a lot of the value of childhood imagination in the creative field, but how does this abstract value translate in graspable real-life terms?

In the context of the Aerocene workshops in Palais de Tokyo, I gave newborn Aerocene enthusiasts spheres, lenses, sticks and tape; they created floating cities, silver dragon parachutes, hand-held solar concentrators, all taken out of our most innocent and colourful dreams. It is easy to accept how lovely such exercises are but can we dig deeper into talking of the value of it?

The point of departure for this conversation is that imagination doesn’t stay confined only within the realms of the intangible and inexistent. Imagination is a form of future creation.  Growing up, we get exposed to information, ideas and possibilities. Later in our lives this early information we get exposed to turns into usable knowledge answering to our everyday problems; imagination reconfigured into real-world answers. Nourishing this collection of information early can give rise to new possibilities in the future. What we dream of today lays the grounds for how we problem solve in the future. These are the building blocks for the world of the future. Being aware of this can be one of the most seminal points in conversing about the environment and finding creative ways to sustain it. With this in mind, I look positively into a future when our young Aeronauts become engineers, architects, and thinkers.

Children. They take what you give them and use it as material to weave brilliant worlds of imagination. This imagination is a form of future creation

When I was maybe 10 years old, my father gifted me an origami book he found during his travels in Japan. I got immersed in it, trying out all the different creations I had the time and patience exploring. Among them was a model for a paper bird that opened and closed its beak as a geometrical response to the opening and closing of its wings.

11 years later I met Daniel and the Aerocene team during an Aerocene Hack in London. They presented me an interesting fact and a thought provoking challenge. Fact: Balloons expand as they go upwards. Challenge: Create a trap that tests for life at 10 km height. All came together; the origami got on the balloon and it became a trap to test life in the air. Simple. Uncomplicated. Elemental. Of course not all experiences are as  linear as this but the value remains the same; the information we learn while growing to become adults reconfigure into answers to problems we are faced with later in our lives. If the information we find valuable to collect is mechanically inclined, it is only natural that the answers we come up with are going to mirror that.


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What materials do we pass on to our next generation? And perhaps more importantly, how can these materials define the world of tomorrow? How different is tomorrow going to look like if we pointed the kids to look at the sun as a source of energy instead of fossil fuels? What if we gave children an aerosolar sculpture instead of a toy car or plane? What if we raised them with stories of floating with the wind instead of stories of violent conquering? At a critical time for our planet like this, we can imagine very easily how teachings we pass on to the next generation can become a make-it-or-break-it-deal for the future of our planet. The responsibility is huge but so is the potential.


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Think about this. Parents! What if you borrowed an Aerosolar Sculpture from Aerocene Foundation and head outdoors? Reattune yourselves and your children to the environment. Teach each other. Show your kids how bodies can be lifted so simply; all it takes is some air and heat coming from the sun. Sow your children’s thinking toolboxes with seeds of mechanical, fossil-fuels-free principles and let us see together how these seeds can sprout into the future.

Aerocene Albedo

AEROREFLECTOR MANUAL

The Aeroreflector invites a collective turn towards the most important energy source for earthly life, the Sun. In positioning our tools-for-change towards it, we enter into an active multi-directional relationship with our brightest shining star, forming an act of hope-filled togetherness and solidarity with the Earth’s natural surface reflectivity, known as albedo. Based on a truncated pyramid concept developed long before the Anthropocene, the parabolic structure of the Aeroreflector reveals generational connections across various cultures, materialising methodical parabolic techniques, essentially formulating a solar thermal collector for heating. The concept of concentrating light using curved mirrors has historically helped civilisations to use collective efforts to heat, cook, and to share meals from renewable energy sources, collaborating with simple forms of abundant elemental energies instead of the extraction of commodity fuels for combustion-based process of heat generation, at the expense of all natural phenomena, ourselves included. In becoming more familiar with direct solar energy, discovering the warmth from this life-providing star and the ocean of air through which it transmits, we can rearticulate the way energy and heating power has been (ab)used since the dawn of a human-influenced geologic age. Turning our attention to new circular modes of nourishing each other and the planet simultaneously, we enter into a renewed reflective practice; one in which we re-attune to the Earth, adhering not only to ourselves but interplanetary rhythms, other species and nature itself too. Through this multidisciplinary exchange, we collectively attempt to understand how the sun made us, and what the sun could make of us, if we begin to sense it differently.

THE AEROREFLECTOR AND ITS PARTS

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Aeroreflector (closed) and gear
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Aeroreflector (open)
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Aeroreflector gear: solar cover, solar base, solar pot.

1 - ATTUNE TO THE WEATHER

If the sun doesn’t shine, we adjust, collectively embodying a practice of planetary attunement.

2 - UNSCREW THE HANDLE

​Be careful: smooth and slow moves.

3 - GET YOUR FOUNDATION TOGETHER

​Following the form of emissions-free parabolic solar cookers, attach the four-peg support structure to the base positioned at the central focal point of the parabola.​

4 - ATTACH YOUR SOLAR POT

This central focal point is where maximised solar energy is captured. Place your pot into the warming embrace of the four-peg structure.

5 – EXTEND YOUR TOOLS

Attach the spoon/fork supplied to the unhinged handle, making it an handy-long tool to protect your hands from the heat emanated by the Aeroreflector.

6 – MAKE USE OF THE MOST ABUNDANT SOURCE OF ENERGY ON EARTH – SOLAR ENERGY

A transparent heat trap around the pot allows sunlight to enter whilst also enclosing the heat. The reflecting surface around capture extra sunlight from an area about three times as big as the pot.

7 - WARMING INSTRUCTIONS

Set the entire structure on a dry, level surface in direct sunshine, away from potential shadows. Put ingredients in the pot. Turn every 15 min to the rhythm of the Sun’s movement. If the weather is optimal, you can even boil or barbecue your food.

IMPORTANT

Never leave the umbrella unattended; do not place your hand directly in the focal point.

Subverting the individualised functionality of the umbrella as a tool for self-protection from the rain or rays of Sun, the Aeroreflector’s inversion transforms the umbrella into a speculative tool for communal activity and aerial attunement. The Aeroreflector joins the Earth’s surface albedo in redirecting the energy of the sun away from the surface, oceans and atmosphere of our Planet, solidarising ourselves with this natural process that maintains the thermodynamic balance of the Earthly system, which is increasingly.

In the age of the Anthropocene, reframing the use of the umbrella invites us to enter not only a reflective practice in communication with the sun, but to also further reflect on the extractive relations of our fossil fuel milieu, whose inherent inequalities proliferate into the air, creating a human-driven thermodynamic shift that has redefined the life-giving energy of the Sun as a threat, experienced by the consequences of Earthly warming.

Aerocene Albedo, 2018
Installation views and Aerocene performances on the occasion of ‘Audemars Piguet presents Tomas Saraceno for Aerocene’ at Art Basel Miami, 2018.

Courtesy Aerocene Foundation.

Creative Commons License
Image by Aerocene Foundation licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

For more information contact us at info@aerocene.org.

Marble Breeze or the politics of the troposphere

Marble Breeze

or the politics of the troposphere

Created by

Adrien Rigobello: Project Manager, Strategic Designer (electronics, cartography)
Waèl Allouche: Creative Director
Paula Echeverri Montes: Strategic Designer (open data)
Paul Carneau: Strategic Designer (electronics)
Tim Leeson: Strategic Designer (weather data)
Tariq Heijboer: Graphic Designer and Editor of the booklet

Together with Aerocene, thr34d5 has invited 15 participants to a free experimental workshop from Nov. 19th to 25th 2018, in the context of Tomás Saraceno‘s Carte Blanche exhibition in Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

YOU CAN HAVE A LOOK AT THE LECTURES THAT WERE GIVEN DURING THE WORKSHOP HERE


DOWNLOAD THE PUBLICATION EDITED BY TARIQ HEJBOER HERE

From open data de-encryption to measurement instrument making, the Marble Breeze reveals itself at its many scales and shapes. As agents of society, we want to understand the hidden-to-our-senses complex composition of the omnipresent, yet often ignored, surrounding matter that is air, to engage in the politics of the troposphere.Such as a cone can be defined by its various profiles (circle, ellipse, point,…), we approach reality by aggregating various points of view. The amorphous and subjective materiality of air is explored with each agent’s sensitivity, unrolling the folds of reality. We design our own instruments to communicate our impressions of the world. This process is essential to us to understand the Anthropocenic reality and create a variety of semantics for it. We are a legion – defending a post-Anthropocentric philosophy.The Marble Breeze experimental workshop was all about developing a material sensitivity to air, and developing a sensitive approach to its complexity, though the process of instrument design and cartography.

– adrien rigobello

Acknowlegements

thr34d5 team would like to thank Aerocene for the trust and support during the whole process, and for making possible the production of the final booklet! Namely, we would like to thank a lot Camilla Berggren Lundell and Grace Pappas.

We would also like to thank Palais de Tokyo for the perfect conditions and help that they gave us, especially Simon Bruneel!

We are thanking very much Ewen Chardonnet for his help in flying the Aerocene sculptures!

And with thr34d5 and Tariq we would like to thank all the participants for boarding with us in this experimental workshop that went very well! Amazing discussions and so much energy, we are very glad to have had the chance to share this time and space with you all!

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AIRmonica

hear the harmony of the air

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We want to hear the harmony of the Air and see its lifeforms, through the musical game of gases and showing bacterial growth as 3D objects.

It always starts on a personal level, everyone grew bacteria in their kitchen. The sample became a nudge, as we live in a shared environment our habits affect its form and create a “landscape” in multiple scales.


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DARK MATTER

being adrift

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Leaves and balloons drift in the breeze …

And dark matter is the ultimate drifter. In modern cosmology, the only force acting on it is gravity. That means it is in free fall, and like an astronaut in orbit, it feels no forces. Hypothetical dark-matter beings might be able to feel tidal forces …


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LISTEN

air as transmitter

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The air is the transmitter of sound, but we can’t see it. How can we represent sound without air? Does the sound has an image, a material representation?
We decided to record the sound around the Palais de Tokyo, taking advantage of the protest in Paris transmitting reflection on politics expressed through anger.

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Weather data


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design semantics

A media is a map,

a map is a language.

The post-anthropocentric narrative requires the adoption of a new language, our own, moving the frontiers of the medias of the existing worlds. To challenge the existing  mapping rules we are adopting linguistic’s semantic.
Such as a world map is structured by geographical areas, or as the first TV Image of Mars by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is made of a matrix on an assembly of stripes, the syntax of a map is its context, it is the structure of the information.

A morphology can be a 2D representation, such as dots on a map, or a 3D structure, such as the cubes in the Speelhuis architectural project by Piet Blom. How, within the structure, does the information unravel? How does it inscribe itself?

The lexicon, or vocabulary, is the scope of colors on a map for example. It is an additional layer to the morphology. It can fit within the color codes suggestions provided by NASA – unifying the information communication between maps; it can also be challenged and become blurry, imprecise, and participative. Turned into a gradient of textures for our other senses such as basses to highs, rough to smooth.

Then comes the phonology, the accent, the sub-languages. The designer’s intent can be retrieved in this form – it evolves through time and is culturally situated. For sure, it can be neutral and  standardizing, we wish to see it contrasting and taking a stand.

– adrien rigobello

France moves towards the record for fully solar powered human flight

On Saturday 27th of October 2018, Aerocene community established a new worldwide record. Six passengers were buoyant with the air for 79 minutes, staying afloat without using any propane, discerning itself from all other certified solar crafts in existence, and achieving the acknowledgment for the first fully solar-powered human flight in France.

235 YEARS AGO, THE GROUNDS OF VERSAILLES WITNESSED THE FIRST EVER HUMAN BALLOON FLIGHT. A HOT-AIR BALLOON BUILT BY THE BROTHERS JOSEPH-MICHEL AND JACQUES-ÉTIENNE MONTGOLFIER TOOK THE FIRST HUMANS ON AIR AND ENTERED THE HISTORY OF BALLOONING.https://aerocene.org/sussurrus-meets-aerocene-in-dresden/

As a new flânerie but with a clear purpose, Aerocene imagines air nomadism, a paradigm rethought to suit, and to function with humans and non-humans, floras and seas, moving around in symbiosis with planetary forces. It’s crucial to introduce a re-articulation of how we sense the world and its species, and to start thinking about how an equally distributed right to mobility might look. By looking at the world through these lenses, we can try to learn to not only respond to challenges posed by climate change but also actively prevent it from extending its reach.

Acting in liminal places, beyond borders and excluding surfaces, envisioning a future free from fossil fuels, lifted only by the heat of the sun and traveling around the world following wind currents and atmospheric forces, the aerosolar flight performance was set in Vallée du Loing in Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne in France, 2 hours outside of Paris.

We moved away from the French capital in the early morning, away from fluxes of life and subjective ambiances. Every so often, we catch urban societies and crowded cities, expressing and reflecting their portraying image to themselves. Mirroring the mise en scene of individual looks can echo a commonality but is frequently trapped in self-reflection, using the same image frame over and over again. “Paris is the city of mirror. The city is reflected in a thousand eyes, a thousand lenses…. the immaterial element of the city, her emblem…” (Walter Benjamin)

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THE ARRIVAL

Embraced by a gentle fog, submerging everything that is visible to the human eye, we arrived to the departure spot around 7:30am. Surrounded by an impalpable vaporous aura, it took everyone long to see anything palpable at all. Finally, focus increased, enabling sights to land, distinguishing three motionless shadows in the  mist. The amorphous entities stood still in the field, like prehistoric animals resting in a white cloud, waiting for the sun to appear.

The break of day showed no distinction between what is air, what is ground and what is not.. all floating in a misty landscape, margins and borders staying blurry and undefined.

Tiny figures, like soaring particles in the atmosphere, started moving around in small clusters, following an harmonious choreography playing with the fluctuating tempo of the Earth.

The energy spread in the air, perceivable through a breezy fingertips tickling, leading hands to move together with the rest of the community reunited on the field.

On the ground

How can we cool down the planet? How can we foster a new sensitivity towards the earth, the atmosphere and each other? How can we explore without exploiting? How to subvert the fossil fuel regime with regime of the Sun?

Preparing the field with a circular multilayered reflective launchpad created a space for atmospheric collaboration and thermodynamic imagination, where the mirrored surface harnesses thus reflecting the Sun’s energy.

Using a silver-coloured reflective surface, a kind of mirror image shining back at itself, in a country known to have rearticulated the luminous, the use of light in representations of the real and the unknown, as part of an art historical narrative, Aerocene – perhaps undeliberately – detaches itself from established domains of power, becoming, appearing in super(art-i)ficial illumination.

Collaborative action. We all joined the Earth’s albedo, bending light together. Recasting the Sun’s energy back to the cosmic, a dual energy conversion appeared but happened slowly. Through atmospheric forces themselves, the internal air of the D-O AEC was heated, enabling the sculpture to finally be On Air while at the same time pushing forward a cooling, a de-heatation of the Earth’s and its boundary layer.

An on-and-off hacking of the terrestrial sphere, leaving no footprint of its passage, the Aerocene community prepared the hemispherical aerosolar port ray by ray, action by action, preparing to take off the first fully solar human flight in France.

ON TIME

It takes time to inflate an aerosolar sculpture, filling it with emissions-free gases. It takes time for the sun to fully embrace it, furnishing its inside with heat. It takes time to start feeling the energy concentrating in and around the envelope. Time is all and cohabitation is everything.

Humans, sun, winds and soil are key ingredients in Aerocene flights. The cooperation grows and extends as they await the right moment to take off.  A new aerosolar intuition marks every lift as community members flourish with each and every flight.

Energy collides, refracts and reflects, becoming all around the place, giving life to a kind of shamanic significance.  It re-links us to the smallest and to the biggest elements of the universe. It initiates a rhythmic walk around the path of the reflective shape. Its focus point is all energies surrounding it, waiting to be collected, mixed and merged with the one of the Sun. It creates an uplifting vortex that, believe it or not, made the sculpture buoyant, defying gravity once again.

Floating in Aerocene, different ecologies of practice emerge, changing our modes of interaction and reflecting. In defiance, the current realities of the Anthropocene promotes climate instability and inherent proliferation of inequalities.

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ON AIR

It’s like jumping on the moon, but going towards the sun. You are bouncing up, you are bounce back down. The sculpture eagerly striving to be on air. It is a dance: on air, on the ground, on air, on the ground, and everytime you jump, you are lifting time. It becomes longer and longer, until you go up, and it stays still: lifted only by the sun and nothing else. You don’t feel the wind. You are the wind.

6 people, 6 aerosolar pilots. Floating time of 1h 19 min. On air, with air, because of air.

Through the presence of an unbiased witness, Aerocene achieved a new, fully certified record for a completely solar human flight on 27 of October 2018.

On the same grounds as the first fuel-powered balloon flight 235 years earlier, we took off. This time, it wasn’t at the court of Versailles, in front of the king and queen of a monarchy soon to be ended by a revolutionary approach, dismantling the Ancien Régime. This time, it was because of a different régime, lead by the true Sun king, our life-giving star. A new time is born, enabling a new approach to sovereignty and power to grow.

With aerosolar flights, Aerocene community measures depths, looking at the possibilities of the atmosphere through the atmosphere itself. In conjunction with the DIT (do it together) spirit we thrive through collective action. We are constantly asking ourselves and the world around us more questions: how would breathing feel in a post fossil fuel economy, and what is our response-ability? How do we challenge geopolitical borders in an age of climate inequality? How can we start looking at things from another’s point of view, following a new, different rhythm of the planet?

Today Aerocene community took the field and dove into the ocean of air, embodying the aerosolar, re-thought and reflected deeper into the opportunities of a new reign. Bottom-up uprising will guide us, and hopefully lead us, the humanity and all life forms to re-connect to the elemental energy of the Sun.


Without the enthusiasm, support and contribution from the community, all this would never have been made possible. Thanks to all for coming.

Helenesee moves on air – Free Flight

Free Flight

Archimedes & Aerides

Saturday August 4

What would breathing feel like in a post fossil fuel epoch, and what is our response-ability?

How to challenge geopolitical borders in an age of climate inequality?

Last Saturday, August 4 in 2018, the Aerocene community reunited for two seperate free flights. First was an atmospheric rehearsal for the most sustainable and longest Aerocene Free Flight and for the first emissions-free around-the-world flight. After that, an aerosolar sculpture free flight that would be released from a kayak on the lake Helenesee.

Meeting at 8 am at Helenesee by the Wassersportzentrum, we started our journey towards decolonisation of the air from particulate matter.

Once upon a time, millenia ago, people began dreaming about taking flight. The philosophers and thinkers who first thought, wrote and spread the word about this possibility had no notion of fuel. However, once the Montgolfier brothers took flight, things took a turn for the unsustainable. The brothers, and the people following them, were to bare the label aeronaut, which describes someone who operates or travels in an airship or balloon. It’s a word connoting mythicism, forwardness and conquering the improbable, which turned out not to rather conceivable after all.

Over the last 50 years,  another generation of Aeronauts have resurfaced. Having a similar flare for exploring the improbable but slightly different intention, they revisit the great minds of the past which have been overlooked after the fossil fuel apocalypse. From this, they venture onwards, towards for brighter futures for all.

Like aeronauts uses s, futures do the same. Devoted people, from diverse backgrounds, in diverse communities, with diverse positive intentions, have gathered over the last decades to pave the way for us to quite literally, track them. In the case of the Aerocene community, the word aeronaut takes on another form. “Aero”, a short, clean word refers to the aerial, a symbol of the essence of our activities, communicating a message of simplicity in a world of tumultuous geopolitical relations, reminding us that the air belongs to everyone and should not depend on any type of sovereignty: free from borders, free from fossil fuels. “Naut”, also short for nautical, is a significant and perhaps accidental recognition of the similarity of floating in fluids, whether gaseous air or liquid water. The neologism highlights togetherness, as with the aeronauts of Aerocene, just like liquids and gases conjoin under the term fluids, our community effort synthesises under Aerocene.

The 4th of August was special; the Aerocene community united once again for an unforgettable free flight journey. Community commitment and fellowship, with each other as individuals, as well as with the earth, seemed to be the key ingredients bringing them together, this time with an added accomplishment: many had been camping on site prior to the morning of the free flight. After necessary preparations, tranquility took over the campers as they reconnected with the world around them and experienced the harmonic consonance of the earth. When crashing into sun-heated water, and peering upwards, surrounded by the power of the sun after it disappeared behind the horizon, we floated peacefully, perhaps unaware of the depth of meaning that this swim had for the upcoming flight.

Although our Aerocene journey had begun the previous evening, waking up with the sun and slowly recognising our surroundings, empirically and metaphysically, was a key moment in this free flight. Rising up, hopping down from a flying tent that was innocently strapped between trees, or rising up and out of an earthbound tent, revealed to us the peaceful surroundings. In that moment we couldn’t have felt the sun’s intensity stronger. Waking up differently than we were used to, out of the usual routine, gathering with the community and floating with Aerocene, we were still unaware of the two flights that were about to happen with our two sculptures: Aerides and Archimedes.

The Archimedean principle states that the upward buoyant force that is being exerted on a body and immersed in fluid, whether partially or wholly, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces. It acts in the upwards direction at the centre of mass of the displaced fluid. This principle applies to any body, including aerosolar sculptures, which tap into an unlimited source of energy, the Sun. The sculpture is designed to absorb and preserve as much infrared radiation as possible, and when the warm air inside the balloon becomes lighter than the ambient air, the resultant force is a vertical upwards force: the aerostatics force or ‘lift’. In this way, our Archimedes represents the dawn of aeronautics as well as the later ascent of the aerosolar many years later, as originating from the clean mathematical principle stated by him.

As aerosolar flights are weather dependent, needing sun and minimal wind to lift, and we were lucky to experience a warm and sunny day. While the sun was shining, returning to the water for a swim was a great option to cool our fragile bodies from the heat of the sun, the very source that lifts the Aerocene sculpture, allowing it to float in the air as we do beneath it in the water. Gently on the clear waters of the lake, we float with Aerocene, all heated by the sun. Due to the partially reflective material of the Aerocene sculpture, the air inside an envelope will slowly heat up until the inner air density is low enough to provide sufficient lift to overcome gravity and make the envelope rise. Once in the air, an untethered Sculpture can easily rise up to the stratosphere in a couple of hours. Filled only with air, lifted only by the sun and the infrared radiation from the surface of the earth, carried only by the wind, floating onwards without the use of fossil fuels, is a recent development of today’s aeronauts. Aeronautics has required patience, and this is no exception. Inflating the sculpture Archimedes was done by running in order to fill it with air, and waiting for it to begin to rise before guiding it to the water, from which it was released using a kayak. Despite light cloud cover at this time, the radiation reflecting off from the glistening water and the heat of the sun above allowed it to lift into the air smoothly.

In accordance to the patience required in these types of events, the importance of spending time with each other and getting to know one another cannot be overstated. We had plenty of time to do so on this day. After some intermission, which can always be expected with aerosolar launches, the launch team and the rest of the community were preparing for the first-ever free flight rehearsal launch. Aerides, a tetra shaped balloon, accompanied by a small ensemble of 6 sbs-13s, was aiming to reach a flight level of 13000 meters. Followed by stations worldwide in collaboration with the APRS community, the flight was a test of overnight long distance flight constantly capturing temperature data from inside and outside of the aerosolar sculpture. If it would travel across the globe, it would be the first time with a camera. Attached to the balloon, there was a solar cell and a tracker, Pecan Pico 10-B, built by Aerocene community member and radioamateur Sven, with help from Bob in Australia, their collaboration a global journey itself. Since Aerocene technology is open source, everybody has access to it, and to track, modify and to change, and is invited to do so.

The concept behind the flight was to photograph and analyse the behaviour of the solar balloon and its day-and-night-cycle, in which the power of the sun is ever present but also everchanging. The aim is to be able to complete an aerosolar emissions free around the world free flight in the foreseeable future. Just like we feel the heat of the sun within the water, as we float overtop, the sculpture also feels the heat of the sun through the membrane. Whether directly during the day, or indirectly throughout the night, it keeps itself afloat in this way.

The blazing hot day made us losing track of time and space as we became caught in the pulse of the relationship between the sun, earth and ourselves. Ever present and oscillating, the current of energy from the sun translated into a stream of consciousness. During the moments of the inbetween, when the pendulum briefly pauses at each end, at dusk and dawn, we were allowed to physically feel the constant oscillation of energy. We cool down at dusk and warm up at dawn, just like the aerosolar sculptures. Embodying us in the air, it was an eternal pendulum to which we all seemed to feel attached to. Together with our reflections during this event, an imaginative space opened. It was both physical and metaphysical, and became a space to pause and to reflect, reclaiming the space between us, the cosmos and the atmosphere.

In many ways, we devise new modes of sensitivity and reactivate a common imaginary towards achieving an ethical collaboration with the environment. We find ourselves usually in the every day, but this weekend was a heightened event in all of our lives. With the rehearsal of an aerosolar around the world flight, we pictured a new infrastructure, challenging and redefining an international right to mobility. Along with our community efforts, we re-assessed our connection to the earth, symbolising the opposition to the extractive approach developed by humans towards this planet. We call to re-examine the possibility of freedom of movement in the air above us.. In this way, as aeronauts of an  imaginative nature, we call for a new interplanetary ecology which reconnects elemental sources of energy of the sun and planets to break the boundaries of the sublunary. We can experience the dawn of this when floating with Aerocene, acquainting ourselves with the power of the sun and starting our journey towards the decolonisation of the air.

In this way amongst others, we devise new modes of sensitivity and reactivate a common imaginary towards achieving an ethical collaboration with the environment we find ourselves in every day, during this weekend a heightened presence in our lives. The rehearsal of an aerosolar around-the-world flight symbolises a new infrastructure which redefines an international right to mobility, and along with our community to reassess our connection to the earth, we hereby oppose the extractive approach developed by people towards the planet we inhabit. Instead, we call to re-examine the possibility of freedom of movement between countries, along with a reconnection between us and the elemental sources of energy, the sun and the planets. The dawn of this, the start of a new interplanetary ecology of interconnection between us all and the environment, can be sensed in moments like these, when we float with aerocene and re-acquaint ourselves with the power of the sun, beginning our journey towards the decolonisation of the air.

We re-acquaint ourselves with the power of the sun and we re-activate a common imaginary towards achieving an ethical collaboration with the environment. We find ourselves in every day, during this weekend a heightened physical presence in our lives. Within this, along with the rehearsal of an aerosolar around-the-world flight, we symbolise an imaginary new infrastructure which leaves behind the extractive approach people have adopted towards the earth, and re-assesses our connection to the earth and re-examines the possibility of free movement across the world as we move towards an interconnection between us and the elemental sources of energy, the sun and the planets, a new interplanetary ecology of practise in terms of oscillating harmony.