If you’re lulled awake by electronic music at daybreak, look up. The tune may be coming from the seven hot-air balloons in artist Luke Jerram’s Sky Orchestra as it bumps ’80s-synth-style ambient tracks from the heavens.
Jerram, who has already staged performances of his car-speaker-enhanced flotilla over Birmingham, England, and Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, has been invited by the Royal Shakespeare Company to rock the skies over Stratford on Midsummer morning in June. “Each balloon plays a different part of the score,” Jerram explains, “creating a vast surround sound in the sky.”
The project is also helping University of West England researchers study the effect of music on dreams. To collect info, questionnaires are distributed door-to-door as Jerram’s balloons drift by. “People who have been through traumatic experiences suffer nightmares,” says UWE psychologist Chris Alford. Apparently, subconscious doses of Brian Eno can help.
– Sonia Zjawinski
credit:Thierry Grobet
Up, up, and away: Musical balloons trumpet the dawn.
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