Weather Balloons: Clips

An exploration of dreams is a recurring source of inspiration for my practice. Coupled with observations from lived, waking experience, dreams offer another layer and resource for making art. Inspired by my dreams the balloon is used as a material to explore the entanglement between waking life and the dream, between multifarious vantage points within the reality of everyday experience. I address some of the history of weather balloon as a scientific object and contemporary artists that use this artifact in their own art practices. The dream is embraced as an artist tool as is the cell phone. Aspects of contemporary thinking on objects informs the processed based research namely object-oriented ontology and vibrant matter. Some understanding of how relational aspects are privileged in vibrant matter start to emerge. Throughout this thesis I explore material practices in relation to new technology namely the weather balloon and the smartphone. In addition to philosophical ideas on objects, I investigate this through theoretical constructs on improvisation to develop bridging strategies to explain how the body reacts and responds to the beautiful agency and power of objects.