Project Outline















When you listen to the wind in the trees, it is not the wind you are hearing but the sound of the air moving against the leaves. The opposite is true for a hot air balloon: the balloon is carried by the wind, so when you are flying you do not hear or feel the wind. This is an ideal condition for sound recording, the intermittent burner blasts punctuating the silence will only increase your hearing range. I wish to capture the essence of this.

I will take flight in a hot air balloon over Cambridge and then Colchester. Flying above these landscapes I will be able to record the sounds moving up from the ground, creating a sonic map of the journey. A DV camera strapped onto the balloon will record the visual path. The first balloon flight will travel over Cambridge city centre in March and the second will fly over Colchester from the new Firstsite gallery in August.

Once recorded, the material will be turned into a 'sound walk', the listeners will follow the whole or parts of the route. They will be listening to the recording and watching the footage on a PMP (personal media player, hand-held media device e.g. Iriver or Archos). The listener will be directed along the balloon's original path, experiencing the birds' eye view from the sky. Depending on the nature of the recordings, the material can be edited and selected to suit different walks across the city, or the entire balloon journey. The sound will have priority over the image by using relatively small visuals and immersive headphonic sound. The visuals will appear like an aerial map, similar to ‘Google Earth’. These walks would also be available as an internet download or video podcast.















photos by Ben Pettitt