Blackwell Publishing LtdAerostatic spacing: on things becoming lighter than air Derek P McCormack The development of practical aerostatic or lighter than air balloon flight in 1783 marked the emergence of a new way of being and becoming mobile, one that also involved an important technical and experiential transformation in earth–atmosphere relations. This paper narrates an account of the distinctive kinds of spaces of which aerostatic flight is generative. At the centre of this account is the claim that the affective materiality of aerostatic flight is simultaneously processual and possessing of what political theorist Jane Bennett calls ‘thing-power’. In developing this claim, the paper draws from a range of historical and contemporary accounts of aerostatic flight in order to elaborate upon three aspects of the spaces of things becoming aerostatic: the distinctive kinds of sensing of which aerostatic flight is generative; the differential qualities of affectivity in which the movement and materiality of aerostatic things participates; and the kinds of vertiginous events in which the felt movement – actual or anticipated – of aerostatic things is implicated. The paper concludes by speculating upon how attending to the distinctive and sometimes disquieting materiality of aerostatic things might contribute to geographical engagements with the spaces of air and atmosphere. key words air affectivity atmosphere balloon materiality mobility School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY email:
[email protected] revised manuscript received 18 July 2008 Preamble It begins rather suddenly, torque-like: a sense of anchorage giving way to tensile instability. It happens as a minor corporeal reorientation, an incremental rebalancing of body-space, an unthinking adjustment of feet: the sensing of a kind of torsional ungrounding. This sense is quickly replaced however by something else: steady uplift, generated by 5500 metres cubed of enveloped helium, the force of which is balanced by the steel cable unwinding, slowly, from a point hidden somewhere below the ground. And so commences the experience of ascent, one which, save for wind, metalcreak and audible cablestrain, is largely silent. Located in Parc André Citroën in Paris’s 15th Arrondissement, the Eutelsat balloon has been in operation since 2002. So long as the weather is reasonably calm, and the wind moderate, on most days between 9.00 am until the park closes, the balloon ascends to a height of 150 metres or so at intervals of about 30 minutes.1 In May 2007 I spent a day in the park, making three ascents in the Eutelsat balloon. Between ascents I observed the balloon and other park users acknowledging, responding, ignoring or orienting themselves to the variable presence of this aerostatic thing rising and falling at reasonably regular intervals in their midst. The visit to the park was made as part of a research project about the 1897 Andrée balloon expedition to the North Pole (see McCormack 2008). While the expedition was Swedish, Paris, and Parisian balloons, were central to the material, imaginative and affective geographies of the enterprise. The expedition balloon ‘The Eagle’ (Örnen) had been constructed in the factory of Henri Lachambre on the Rue de Vaugirard; one of the expedition members – Nils Strindberg – had made Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 aerostatic things became highly fashionable. the resonant after-effects of the experience of ascent coalesce into a sustained attempt. the first flights in Paris in 1783 were witnessed by anything from 100 000 to 400 000 people (Kim 2004a. Introduction In early June 1783. But the repeated and ‘ineffably embodied process’ of ascension. the repeated event of ascension of the Eutelsat balloon becomes implicated in the movement of more than the Andrée expedition: it begins to draw in and to become enveloped by accounts of other ascents. an event which itself featured two large tethered balloons as one of its main attractions (see Sollinger 2005). Olivetto 2007). material and experience – from envelope to ascension – through which the event of the 1897 Andrée expedition continues to resonate. in Annonay. By late August of the same year the Montgolfier brothers had a serious competitor: the physicist Jacques-Alexandre Charles made the first public ascent in Paris using hydrogen. Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier conducted the first successful public launch of a hot-air balloon. their design replicated in a range of popular materials and practices: miniature balloons were all the rage. depending upon the account read. Rolt 2006). near Lyon. And. the development of practical balloon flight marked the public emergence of a distinctively novel way of becoming and being mobile: one that was genuinely aerostatic. In the months following. is generative – at least potentially – of differential affects and divergent lines of thought (Wylie 2002. ascending in the Eutelsat balloon is part of an attempt to trace the distributed assemblage of process. The interest generated by these events is hardly surprising: as a technical transformation in the human experience of earth–atmosphere relations. subsequent flights carried animals. even when tethered. some actual. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . Rolt 2006. undertaking six training flights during March and April 1896. These early balloon ascents generated enormous interest: indeed. On one level then.2 With a circumference of 110 feet. before Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes became. some fictitious.26 Derek P McCormack his first balloon ascents in the city. dresses and shirts were fabricated in the style of the aerostat. on 20 November 1783. This paper narrates an account of the distinctive spaces of materiality. but all involving the differential movement of aerostatic things. Topham 2002. 445). once during the 1889 World Exhibition. narrated in the lines of what follows. and the expedition leader – Salomon August Andrée – had also visited Paris on a number of occasions. or ‘inflammable air’. And over time. as I seek to show in this paper. to think through the multiple spaces of aerostatic things. their balloon reached an altitude of 6000 feet during a flight that lasted about 10 minutes. and artefacts from clocks to lamps were produced in the shape of the balloon (see Dessauce 1999. the first human passengers to make a balloon ascent – in a craft designed by the Montgolfiers. While neither ascent involved any living passengers. movement and experience associated with the invention of Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2009 The Author. In this respect. however. the paper also develops and extends ongoing efforts within and beyond geography to articulate conceptual vocabularies that provide purchase on the materialities of space and spacing (Latham and McCormack 2004. arguably less is known about the specificity of experiences of being in and indeed of witnessing things becoming airborne. as Adey et al. The upshot of such work is that the spaces of movement and mobility always involve more than the displacement of self-contained subjects or objects through time-space: rather. it engages with the distinctive materiality of aerostatic things. and practised geographies [of airspace] remain to be adequately charted’ (2007. The difference between aerostatic and aerodynamic flight is crucial here (but see also Cwerner 2006). what Nigel Thrift (2004) has called ‘movement-space’ can be apprehended as an assemblage of relations emerging from a distributed background of technologies and practices. In narrating this account. for instance. the latter has garnered most contemporary attention because of its speed and commercial importance. 347). For instance. While this paper acknowledges and considers the importance of aerostatic things as facilitating techniques of vision and observation. Understandably. the ‘embodied. But aerostatic flight pre-dates its heavier than air relation by well over a century. Cresswell 2006. Whatmore 2006. this paper therefore contributes to geographical understandings of the differentiated emergence and experience of airspace as a zone in which a range of cultural. changing as human geographers become interested in air and atmosphere as zones in which a range of important disciplinary concerns might be addressed. both facilitated by distributed technological assemblages and generative of a range of distinctive experiences (see also Cresswell 2006. and on the process through which things become lighter than air. Then. At a lower altitude. Peter Adey. Newhall 1969. First. regulated and controlled.Aerostatic spacing 27 these aerostatic things. A key contention of the present paper is that any geography of air and atmosphere needs to attend to the specificities of different techniques and technologies of becoming airborne. these geographies have been the focus of a great deal of work by physical geographers. observe. while premised upon the promise and dream of becoming mobile. In turn. 774). the paper is intended as a contribution to and development of recent efforts to deepen conceptualisations of the geographies of air and atmosphere. Specifically. Adey 2004 2008). the paper demonstrates how the materiality of things becoming lighter than air is generative of distinctive modes of experiencing – or sensing – aerostatic space. As they observe. Cosgrove and Fox 2008). Lucy Budd and Phil Hubbard (2007) have drawn attention to the value of engaging with geographies of ‘aeromobility’ through a discussion of the social and cultural geographies of global air travel. in turn. Thus. Anderson and Wylie forthcoming). flying is very much routed through particular sites and spaces of surveillance and control which are. One point of departure for understanding aerostatic flight would be to situate it within a longstanding concern with dreams of unearthly transcendence or geo-strategic omniscience and the technologies of vision designed to realise such dreams (see. Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. emotional. This situation is. Adey 2006. And. Fraser MacDonald (2006 2007) has recently argued that the critical orbit of geography be extended to outer space. albeit in ways that both acknowledge a long-standing concern with earth– atmosphere relations within the discipline and develop this concern through greater attention to ‘space’ as a sphere of geopolitical and technological ‘geo-power’. its development was crucial to the emergence of both ‘air’ and ‘atmosphere’ as technicalscientific. Yet. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . this does not preclude awareness of how the affective materiality of aerostatic bodies also registers through what Jane Bennett calls ‘thing-power’: ‘the lively energy and/or resistant pressure that issues from one material assemblage and is received by others’ (2004. Yet they have received much less attention from human geographers. technical and political questions are mobilised. Here the paper takes some orientation from recent geographical efforts to apprehend how different configurations of affectivity and materiality can be traced via the senses and sensibilities of a range of practices and technologies: through work on somatic practices (McCormack 2003). while the former is often now understood in terms of amusement and pleasure. walking (Wylie 2005) and through sustained reflections on the differentiated nature of mobility (Sheller 2004. Clearly. while increased attention is being paid to how aero-mobility is organised. but no less significantly. and second. the paper seeks to demonstrate that while the ‘object-ness’ of aerostatic bodies can be de-centred through the terms of a relational assemblage of forces and technical devices. Focusing as it does upon aerostatic flight. it develops an account of aerostatic space in two further ways. aesthetic and experiential spaces. Bissell 2007). craning. to sense movement is a process of spacing. Conversely. and works to exemplify. then you might not know it is there. As such. see also De Silvey 2006. ‘Concrete particular. the balloon is difficult to miss from a distance – it stands out as a sphere (‘point’ is not quite accurate) of visual orientation in space. The argument of the paper unfolds as follows. At the same time the discussion also incorporates details and fragments from a range of historical and contemporary accounts of aerostatic flight. which draws one upwards. while also registering potentially as felt and sensed intensities within and between bodies of different kinds. it exemplifies the logics of a processual materialism from which lighter than air things emerge in ways that are generative of differential modes of sensing aerostatic spacing.28 Derek P McCormack this movement-space is sensed differentially. For instance. waiting. how aerostatic spacing can be apprehended as a kind of distributed assemblage whose affective materialities are both pre-personal. The first part of the paper considers the distinctive processual materiality of aerostatic things. and the potential for aerostatic things to ‘un-tether’ through the affective event – actual or anticipated – of vertigousness. hanging there’ The presence of the balloon is not always obvious as you approach the point at which it is tethered. Thus. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . a process that is itself generatively constitutive of different subjectivities: in these terms. Similarly. the style in which the paper is written is not presented as a process of gentle or steady uplift. suspended in distinction against the backdrop of the sky. a deliberate and performative effort to inflect an account of aerostatic space with a sense of the variability of its affective composition. The arrangement and participation of both sources of material here is not intended to provide a comprehensive account of the experience of aerostatic flight: these sources are intended instead to provide an opening onto different modes of questioning aerostatic spacing. beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street. rather. the paper takes seriously a commitment to different modes of address and presentation that. self-contained. Wylie 2005. ‘The balloon. Drawing upon such work. the balloon is on the ground. the differential vectors of affectivity in which the movement and materiality of aerostatic things are involved. Lorimer 2003 2006). the exact location of which I cannot reveal. it is. The arguments and discussion of the paper are illustrated with notes and images drawn from that day spent with the Eutelsat balloon in the Parc André Citroën. when fully ascended. its sheer height causes it to disappear again: from near that point nothing remains but a thin line of verticality. before subsequent sections outline three dimensions of aerostatic spacing: the specific modes of sensingspace of which the movement of aerostatic bodies are generative. while people Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2009 The Author. primed for ascent. the paper takes seriously. expanded northward all one night. if. But as you move towards the point at which the balloon is tethered. as you walk through the park. have become integral to the ethos of geographical encounters with and within the affective movement and materiality of thinking space. articulated in this journal and elsewhere (McCormack 2003. hanging there’ (2003. Conversely. How then might the distinctive materiality of this presence be understood? One way. concreteness and inertia. any search for the true meaning of the balloon. subsides. Yet as the account of the event of its appearance unfolds. the sheer fact of the presence of which registers through different sensory registers. while also quickly deflatable. it quickly becomes clear that little agreement exists about the real significance or purpose of the balloon. there is something obdurately buoyant about the matter of an aerostatic body: something more than sheer movement and something less than object-hood. Charles’s hydrogen-filled balloons were fabricated from a fine silk covered with a rubber solution: this produced a less permeable envelope. a ‘concrete particular. 50). As such. The matter of a balloon seems of a different. 46). But the matter of envelopment involves more than choosing the right kind of fabric: it is also a process at the heart of which is a certain relation of materiality to its ongoing differentiation. in a curious way. it is a badly behaved one. The first Montgolfier balloons were constructed from sections of paper and cloth (usually linen and silk). Barthelme’s story foregrounds the distinctive aspect of the sheer fact of the presence of a balloon in the sky – the fact of its ‘hanging there’. self-contained object. as Barthelme’s story illustrates. as Barthelme observes. stability. the affective. All of which it is possible to speak. So begins Donald Barthelme’s description. it retains a certain quality of object-ness. from the intellectual. At its most basic a balloon is an envelope for the capture and containment of a lift-generating gas of one kind or another. So. On one level Barthelme’s story points deliberately to the absurdity of trying to tie down the meaning of any given event. Yet even if a balloon is apprehensible as a discrete. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . The first is envelopment. Indeed. So while Barthelme’s balloon is stripped of meaning. And as the narrator of the story also notes. Indeed. often with buttoned seams. The Balloon can and has been read as an archetypal postmodern parable through its exemplification of rhizomatic logics of expansion and connection (Childs 2006). This relation is a matter of what Gilles Deleuze (1993) calls ‘the fold’: an abstract line along which Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. more whimsical nature: possessing the capacity to lift. a balloon – and especially when first apprehended by those late eighteenthcentury passengers and earthbound spectators – seems to call into question the very qualities often associated with object-ness: weight. It certainly does not meet those standards of durability and persistence through which the category of object-ness often tends to be defined (see Hitchings 2006). in a short story entitled The Balloon. following the work of John Law (2002) involves de-centring the object-ness of an aerostatic body. or the situation of which it is generative.Aerostatic spacing 29 were sleeping. before long. in terms of the event of the appearance of this balloon is. Early experiments with balloon flight employed a range of different materials with which to fabricate such an envelope. to the tactile–kinaesthetic. The unexpected appearance of this balloon provokes many responses. crucial for a craft whose gas could not be replenished during flight. 46). ‘people began. Three processes are of particular significance here. to locate themselves in relation to aspects of the balloon’ (2003. until it reached the Park’ (2003. In contrast. to think of it as a set of processes and associations through which the materiality of this body comes to cohere. of the sudden appearance and expansion of a vast aerostatic body over Manhattan until it covers much of the island. Rather. The object-ness of a balloon can therefore be decomposed into a processual and affective materialism through the logics of envelopment. In the kind of lively materialism Bennett conjures up through the concept of thing-power. by the prospect of witnessing the process of this aerostatic thing becoming lighter than air. Spinoza (1989) and. precipitation. Similarly. and be affected by. But one suspects that they were also drawn. inflation and buoyancy. potentially. aerostatic. marks the point at which the possibilities inherent in envelopment and inflation are actualised through dynamic relation with atmosphere. inflation did not begin with the late eighteenth-century emergence of aerostatic flight. following Spinoza. the third process of which aerostatic things consist. But the degree to which it facilitated the process of things becoming lighter than air was related closely to contemporaneous scientific experiments with the properties of various gaseous matters: throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. thing-power designates a quality of materiality. Charles. As such. the emergence of the balloon through the experiments of Montgolfier and Charles can be understood in terms of the fold of materiality: not just in the sense that a certain kind of material becomes a container for another. sunlight. as entities not entirely reducible to the contexts in which (human) subjects set them. Buoyancy is reducible neither to the matter of the gas with which the envelope is inflated nor to the permeability of the envelope itself. which. Those who gathered in Paris to watch those ascents may well have had a deepseated interest in the spectacle of scientific and technological progress. and pressure. but in the sense that envelopment is generative of a distinctive way in which materiality relates to the process of its own becoming. differential temperature and pressure gradients. How then to conceive of an aerostatic body in terms of a processual materialism while also affirming the affective fact of its potential presence? One way is by acknowledging the quality and force of what political theorist Jane Bennett (2004) has called thing-power. are not defined in terms of the kind of matter of which they are composed. science had expanded the range of ‘air’ available for purposes of inflation (Kim 2004b). in contrast. and refers to the capacity that a body has to affect. while always emergent from relational assemblages. Defined thus. but also located within an assemblage – each is shown to be in a relationship with the others. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . objects appear more vividly as things.30 Derek P McCormack materiality is inflected. In turn. nevertheless has a sufficient degree of stability and obduracy with which to exercise a degree of affective difference within the world (see also Hawkins and Mueke 2003). For Bennett. 254) Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2009 The Author. The second axis is dynamic. buoyancy is a thoroughly relational process. Topham 2002). but their dynamic interaction with temperature. Deleuze – and following him Bernard Cache (1995) – draw particular attention to art and architecture as techniques through which the folds of matter are drawn out and expressed. my vision. Yet in the process. it is important not to let something else disappear: the fact of the presence of the balloon as a ‘concrete particular. hanging there’. bodies. never entirely exhausted by their semiotics. Put briefly. (2004. and only named by Antoine Lavoisier in 1783. they can be defined along two axes. a gas whose existence had been acknowledged for centuries but had only been recognised as a discrete element in 1766. in affective anticipation. the category of body is extended beyond the sphere of discrete things: bodies. chose to inflate his balloons with hydrogen. and refers to the relations of ‘speed and slowness’ from which a body is composed. and also with the sunlight and the street. and not simply with me. at least in Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza. So while we may speak of the buoyancy of an aerostatic body. following him Deleuze (1990). While the fold is transversal to a range of techniques and technologies of worldmaking. Clearly. In this assemblage. Both can be defined in terms of kinetic relations: by relations of speed and slowness – the velocity and energy of molecules. For it is precisely this fact that was so crucial to the affective spaces generated by the first balloon ascents. or my cultural frame. The exact properties of these gases were not always clear.3 Buoyancy. Here thing-power rises to the surface. other bodies. can be gusts of wind or volumes of gas. Each thing is individuated. however: the Montgolfiers experimented with the combustion of substances such as wool and straw in the mistaken hope they would discover the optimal lifting gas when all they were really doing was generating hot air. it can be apprehended in terms of the affective cartography emerging from the work of first. that is. And both can be defined dynamically in terms of their capacity to affect other bodies (see McCormack 2008). The first of these is kinetic. envelopment provides the necessary potentialising condition for the process of inflation (Dessauce 1999. an attainment of an ideal elevated position free from the grasp of gravity (see Wylie 2002). Using ascension or elevation as a means of gaining a more privileged view or vantage point from which to gaze upon the earth was clearly nothing new: the balloon. vision and mobility. and felt through the sense. for a time. Glaisher’s comments indicate how balloon flight could be and was understood as a literal enactment of philosophical transcendence. offered a novel combination of elevation. geometrical in aspect. the affective thing-power of the balloon could be defined in terms of the sheer novelty of its presence as an object visible in the sky. however temporarily. attention shifts to land-marking. And while Bennett’s argument is articulated in the context of the possibility of opening up the materiality of political thinking to the force of distinctive kinds of agencies. certain kinds of things emerge. Such dreams of transcendence through ascension also resonate with one of the foundational narratives of the Christian tradition. Felt movement becomes less obvious. rather. becoming the still swaying of gentle. Now. In the months and weeks following those first public ascents in 1783. Yet the invention of the aerostat also provided new possibilities for sensing aerostatic space for those privileged or foolhardy enough to travel by balloon. Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. Here. increasing in amplitude as the balloon rises above the shelter of surrounding buildings. to apprehend how. with a degree of persistency. he is the one who leaves the cave and rises up. 127). with a distinguishing feature being the absence of any ground underfoot that might obscure the view directly below.Aerostatic spacing 31 For Bennett then. As Gilles Deleuze suggests. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . tethered ascent. felt through the sense of the ground falling away. within a given assemblage of agencies and actors. Vision was obviously central to this. And. the image of the platonic philosopher is ‘a being of ascents. the former is always an immanent extrusive expression of the latter. feature finding. in the context of this paper it can be put to work in order to rethink the affective materiality of aerostatic space in terms that are relational and processual while also remaining attentive to what is distinctive about the apparent presence and force of aerostatic things. at least from the ground. a view begins presenting itself. thingpower is not juxtaposed to a processual materialism: instead. buoyancy and obduracy. ‘the balloon gratified the desire natural to us all to view the earth in a new aspect’ (cited in Holt 2006. As aeronaut and scientist James Glaisher put it. 83). of things becoming aerostatic. Aerostatic flight could be understood therefore as a particularly opportune experience through which to develop and enhance the scope of the scientific gaze. the park becoming map-like. to foreground thing-power is not to assert the primacy of the thing in itself – it is. in which the pursuit of knowledge is a movement upward. the experience of balloon ascent became a collective event of spectacular witnessing. as the balloon rises. however. The more he rises the more he is purified’ (1990. Sensing aerostatic space As the gondola continues to rise. and with various strands of Enlightenment philosophy. the view presented by such flights was often articulated in terms that described the world below as ‘map-like’. And if aerostatic ascent provided the possibility of realising such cartographic ways of seeing by transcending the bounds of the earth. becoming a landmark even when not in the air: ‘from the Gardens of the Tuilleries one sees it when the cable is altogether wound up. Brighton was seen. 89) Such accounts situate the experience of balloon flight in problematic relation to a variety of practices through which ascension is linked with the desire to attain a cartographic view free from the grasp of earthly everyday life (de Certeau 1984). The north was obscured by clouds . A much larger balloon featured at the 1878 Paris World Fair. towering like a great cupola above the highest point of the Palace’ (New York Times 1878). Leipzig (1897). Designed by Henri Giffard. Thus. All the docks were mapped out. I was struck by its great regularity. Taking a grand view of the whole visible area underneath. and the car touching the ground. they also anticipated the possibility of employing aerostatic photography for the purposes of military surveillance (Rolt 2006). And while Nadar’s photographs began a fashion for birds-eye views of cities. The French photographer Nadar (whose real name was Félix Tournachon) was the first to explore the possibilities of aerial photography. 1895). (Glaisher. 1898). During the last three decades of the nineteenth century such balloons were installed in many cities. leading the eye to the white cliffs at Margate and on to Dover. Nice (1884. Turin (1884. The view was indeed wonderful: the plan-like appearance of London and its suburbs. it was one of the largest balloons ever constructed. and the steam like a narrow line of serpentine mist. and the winding Thames. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . the emergence of aerial photography was intertwined closely with the ongoing development of the balloon in the nineteenth century (see also Newhall 1969). 1890). Buenos Aires (1888). and the sea beyond. and every object of moderate size was clearly seen with the naked eye. Le Géant – a balloon designed by Nadar – was a central attraction at the 1867 exhibition. their presence often coinciding with the organisation of international expositions: Barcelona (1888). filing a patent for the aerial photograph in 1858. and would ascend to an altitude of 500–700 metres. With a capacity of 883 000 cubic feet. Budapest (1896). . it did so through a space of vision already framed by a distinctly cartographic way of seeing landscape. as Glaisher recorded after another ascent. Rome (1890). Copenhagen (1891).32 Derek P McCormack Insofar as balloon ascent provided a way of realising these dreams of transcendence. carrying Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2009 The Author. Chicago (1891). Tethered or ‘captive’ balloons provided a safer. Paris (1889. the invention of photography provided a visual technology through which this view could be captured and put to good use: indeed. this captive balloon carried about 35 000 passengers during its operation. . were sharply defined.4 The fashion for the installation of such tethered balloons was initiated in Paris. caterpillar-like. Mexico (1893). and all the coast line up to Yarmouth. Certainly. the map-like appearance of the country generally. in Freedgood 2000. Railway trains were like creeping things. tamed version of aerostatic flight as visual experience. Their advent provided a spectacularly public demonstration of the power of science. having for its subject a pictorial plan of the town of Cashmere and its environs. In the case of the latter the temptation is to position yourself in relation to the balloon from any number of angles. there were great expectations and high hopes for aerostatic things.Aerostatic spacing 33 up to 50 people for about 20 minutes (Rolt 2006). As John Wylie (2002) has demonstrated. The descent was safely and pleasantly accomplished both yesterday and this evening. is it stillness created through the intentional effort of an individual subject. this is a mode of stillness not defined in opposition to movement (see Bissell 2007). Rue du Bac. after all. Yet. and this is the first great fact of spherical ballooning. Indeed for us. Admittedly. going at the speed of the air current in which we now lived and moved. the process of ascension remains a matter of corporeal involvement in the sensuous materiality of world. was elevation without corporeal effort. the aerostatic balloon does not just provide a vehicle with which to experience movement through the air: it is also generative of a novel mode of sensing stillness in motion. to observe it from here. after a period of initial buoyancy. and the Rue Royale. so obvious to those observing it from the ground. it could also be argued that the alignment of aerostatic and photographic technologies marks that point at which airspace begins to feature within techniques and technologies of surveillance. It does. anticipating much later developments (Bishop and Phillips 2002. And as a result. Yet. in this respect. The apparent absence of felt movement is due to the fact that a free balloon moves with and at the same speed as the wind. such a claim appears difficult to sustain in the case of ascent by balloon: this practice seemed to allow the observer to transcend earthbound corporeality in a way that more conventional practices of ascension and elevation – most obviously by walking – could not: this. due in part to the disquieting disjunction between the visual and kinaesthetic registers of sensing. aerostatic things provide an important way of rendering visible the processual materiality of which the earth’s atmosphere consists. The pioneering aviator Albert Santos-Dumont describes this mode of sensing thus: ‘We were off. (New York Times 1878) It could be argued therefore that the advent of the balloon provides a distinctive mode of remotely sensing defined by logics of vision and visibility: one through which the dream of an all-seeing viewpoint from which to observe. 41). combined with the radiosonde. And to observe it being observed. while often framed by dreams of transcendence. This stillness in movement is itself the outcome of a mobile. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . contemplating the after-affects of ascending-descending. Thus. jerked and strained a little. Nor. Infinitely gentle is this unfelt movement forward and upward’ (Dumont. Nobody complained of giddiness. rather gentle: The motion of the balloon in a very faint breeze was analogous to that of a peg-top when it is near falling.5 ‘Balloonacy’ and benign objects of amusement Your relation to the fact of the balloon’s ascending and descending varies depending upon whether you are: anticipating the prospect of ascent. The experience of tethered balloons was. From the outset. indeed. the subsequent affective story of aerostatic spacing can Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. in Hoffman 2003. (New York Times 1878) The experience of free balloon flight was rather different. passing through the park. the experience of walking or climbing up a hill. ascension without redemptive slog. Crucially. there. while vision is the most obvious sensory register involved in aerostatic flight. distributed and processual assemblage. such expectations have been realised: thus. however. and everywhere. a moving body of enveloped gas and a moving body of wind are in almost complete ‘agreement’ – the former moves with the latter. It deviated from the vertical line far enough to have been suspended over Notre Dame. did not necessarily translate into a strong sense of motion felt within the bodies of airborne passengers. involve distinctive and distinctively novel modes of sensing movement and stillness. The upward movement of the balloon. in Spinozist terms. there was no more wind. having got to the end of its tether. It was purple with the glow of the setting sun. Kaplan 2006). say. locate and map is realised. And. Furthermore. Some of the ascensionists grew a little nervous when the balloon. And again the view: from the altitude to which the balloon rose this evening Paris resembled the Indian Shawl at the Exhibition. hanging out in the park. Yet the absence of obvious effort or exertion does not mean the experience of ascension by balloon is any less corporeal than. to some degree. being in the park between ascents. it would be a mistake to reduce the sensing-space of aerostatic flight to these logics. without realising it at first. both the balloon and Keaton then crash to earth in a rural setting. Such accounts contributed to the popular imagining. throughout the nineteenth century. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 .34 Derek P McCormack be read as a process of gentle deflation interrupted by episodes in which the balloon has been employed – sometimes spectacularly – as a vehicle of hope. The film begins in the ‘House of Trouble’. Keaton climbs on top of the envelope. two episodes stand out. of the balloon as an object circulating within a space of fantasy and adventure (Freedgood 2000). After his advances are rebuffed. its credibility had been tarnished by association with various hoaxes: the most famous of these was Edgar Allen Poe’s (1844/1976) fictional account. One of Verne’s early novels. Keaton finds himself adrift alone above the city. or at best to benign objects of spectacular distraction. Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863/2002) had featured the adventures of a British expedition flying from across Africa. At their request. the passage of Andrée’s balloon expedition exemplifies the degree to which aerostatic things had gone from objects of scientific credibility to vehicles of ‘balloonacy’. it became a vehicle through which the hopes and aspiration of Swedish nationalism were articulated (Wråkberg 1999). Both the imaginative appeal of Andrée’s balloon expedition and the degree of incredulity it provoked also stemmed from its resonance with the narratives and themes of Jules Verne’s work. and with the aid of a ladder. After Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2009 The Author. At this point the balloon is inadvertently untethered. the passage ending when. Yet the fantastical nature of the expedition and its subsequent disappearance seemed only to confirm the impracticality and foolhardiness of using aerostatic travel. before the action moves to a fairground. The extent of this transformation is demonstrated in Buster Keaton’s 1923 film The Balloonatic. this upper surface of the envelope becomes a stage upon which Keaton performs. published as fact in the New York Sun. where Keaton pursues the affections of a female character (Phyllis). The first is the Siege of Paris in 1870. Briefly. While the credibility and feasibility of the expedition was the object of a great deal of critical scrutiny. of a successful three-day balloon crossing of the Atlantic by a certain Monck Mason. and. during which balloons were employed to carry mail and people out of the city: such was their success that popular enthusiasm for balloon flight was briefly re-inflated (Fisher 1965). Of these. after climbing down into the basket. apparently to make some minor repairs and adjustments. in which a gas-filled balloon becomes a comic vehicle for Keaton’s adventures. A second episode was the 1897 Swedish Andrée Expedition to the North Pole (Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 1931). In this context. he ends up shooting a hole in the envelope: predictably. Keaton wanders out of the fairground and sees a tethered balloon surrounded by a small group of distinguished-looking gentlemen. Indeed. standing back. the balloonist seemed ‘to float without weight. the balloon shuddering still. It could be traced. It is more disquieting than the prospect of sheer height. a soul freed from the weight of matter!’ (cited in Hoffman 2003. for instance. This was an experience emergent from a movement-space distributed between body.6 Yet. a sense. through the manner in which things becoming lighter than air participate in the material production of affective atmospheres – from giant inflatable floats in street parades to small helium-filled balloons at children’s parties. envelope and atmosphere while simultaneously generative of differential qualities of sensed stillness and weightlessness. As Elaine Freedgood (2000) has argued. Odilon Redon’s 1882 lithograph. by the experience of altitude and elevation in mountainous regions. Nor is it about the expanse of view. ‘L’oeil. And it could also be traced through attending to how aerostatic things have become part of the spatial logics of advertising. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . Despite the elevation. of falling. this sense of unease is not about the possibility. potentially overwhelming. cable. it registers when. for instance. one looks through the rigging. demonstrating further the degree to which the status of the balloon had transformed by the beginning of the twentieth century. moves toward Infinity’) appears – at least at first glance – as a pre-surreal rendering of this prospect of transcendence through Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. the affective qualities of aerostatic space do not necessarily always consist of the gentle deflation and inflation of hope and amusement through the ‘soft imperceptible sighing of gas through the valves’ (Barthelme 2003. 451). 46): they sometimes take place with a bang. Untethering: the affective event of vertigousness And so the cable arrests. of the fact that ‘there is more of the visible than there should be’ (Wylie 2002. comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’Infini’ (‘The eye. from the Goodyear Blimp to the more recent use of balloons in advertising campaigns of various kinds. and a view which. And yet there remains a lingering sense of unease. however unlikely. 41). it has to be said. like a strange balloon.Aerostatic spacing 35 unpleasing to the cartographic eye. gondola. As Santos-Dumont put it. to move through the atmosphere was to experience the sublimity of vision and visibility in a rather different way than that offered. without a surrounding world. involved coming to terms with a new kind of immersive experience. In Keaton’s film the balloon is more than an object and less than the driver of a narrative: it works as vehicle for the passage between different gestural affects. the balloon mysteriously reappears at the end of the film. more comic capers in the wilderness. in particular. This story of gentle deflation and inflation exemplified by Keaton’s treatment of the balloon could be continued in various ways. saving Keaton and Phyllis from a lethal plunge over a waterfall. It is felt most intensely not when looking out or down: rather. High enough. is not The prospect of infinity was one of the more unsettling aspects of aerostatic flight: free ballooning. as the final section of this paper aims to demonstrate. however. to the underside of the envelope and the space beyond. of the vastness of atmospheric space. Berlin: ‘Gericke and Steler were making a trial flight to test the new balloon which they expected to use in the International races. about they way in which ‘they unhinge’ relations between bodies (1998. aerostatic body: something about the immensity of the field through which vision extends. . In the process. Redon’s balloon-eye seems untethered yet simultaneously in a steady state of suspension between heaven and earth.’ (BBC website July 2006) The movement of aerostatic bodies – even in potential – therefore becomes anticipated through the felt sense of vertiginous events. . as evidence of a condition of benign equilibrium. rapid. This is precisely what happens in the pages of Ian McEwan’s (1998) novel Enduring Love. Yet there is something less then benign about the heavenward prospect of this strange. They disclose variable conjunctions of affects and forces. And what of these events? Of what do they speak? Transformation? Perhaps. inflatable sculpture rose from the ground and crashed down killing two people. however. uncontrolled ascent (see Massumi 2005. And all but one lets go. Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2009 The Author. including ourselves and all our thoughts’ (1998.’ (New York Times 1912) June 2003. . gazing towards the heavens. And for good reason: October 1912. across. the bag burst with a loud explosion. Rupture? Resistance? Hardly. Regardless of the cause. Both men dropped three miles to the ground and were dead when picked up. July 2004: ‘Onlookers at a park in Chester-le-Street. are affected by a sudden gust of wind. this is not quite fear. It drags across the Oxfordshire countryside. . even if it is vertiginous nonetheless. McEwan’s novels are of course all about events: about their anticipation. see also Crosthwaith 2007). Unlike Barthelme’s balloon. They are not necessarily of any more semiotic significance than the fact of the balloon as ‘concrete particular. they tend to ascend or descend in relation to prevailing atmospheric conditions. within and between the sensing spaces of bodies: bodies ascending. Lifted into the air. 8).] When a mile in the air. between ‘one or two ungrounded seconds’ and ‘ruthless gravity’ (McEwan 1998. yet whose affects are felt. chased by the boy’s grandfather. hanging there’. hanging there’. their effects.36 Derek P McCormack 7 aerostatic space (see Jirat-Wasiutynski 1992). Nor is it vertigo. . Anderson 2007. As an affective complex.] The recording apparatus showed that they were riding at a height of 6000 feet when they were suddenly hit with a vertical gust of wind which pushed them straight up with a violence of a hurricane to a height of over 15 000 ft. instead. It is thought up to 30 people could have been inside the structure at the time. [. have described how a large. with the density of the gas within becoming much less than the surrounding atmosphere. And Enduring Love is about the event of which the sudden appearance of ‘an enormous balloon filled with helium’ is generative. limitless gaze of which aerostatic things are generative.] The balloon embodied all the latest ideas in gas-bag construction. suspended in the air. just at the moment they think they have managed to hold down the balloon. however. 13). snagged a five-year-old British girl and carried her for 44 miles to her death entangled in its cables. and resonating. Uplift can result from rapid warming of the envelope. Germany: ‘A helium balloon. as movement registering. [. It is felt as the body’s sensed anticipation in the present of the future event of untethered uplift: an ‘uprush of the unconscious’ (Redon in Werner 2005. with a boy in the basket. [.’ (The Independent 2003) County Durham. the disquietude of which Redon’s paintings speak is not just the prospect of the weightless. The movement of aerostatic things is inherently unstable: left to their own devices. It has all the necessary elements: a balloon-like eye. They also pre-empt the prospect of becoming untethered: felt and sensed affectively as the anticipation of the potential for movement – for sudden. 4). McEwan’s balloon becomes. After a terrific plunge straight upward. County Durham. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . descending. and the park had up to 500 people enjoying the fine weather. or from a sudden gust of wind. Things being and becoming lighter than air disclose a vertiginous affective event sensed as the sudden apprehension of the ‘generation of multiplicity and variety of matter in the universe. . 3. swept from its moorings by sudden winds in Germany. everything is transformed. whose outcomes are never predetermined. Uplift. This felt sense lurks within the process of things becoming lighter than air as a barely-sensed unease immanent to claims for ascension as transcendence. Adey 2008). their craft was caught in an eddy and became unmanageable. falling to the ground. an event-space of affective relations drawing in and enveloping other bodies. The fact of its apparent suspension should not be taken. The latter is helped by a chaotic conjunction of individuals who. suspended. the disturbing and interruptive presence of the aerostatic body of which McEwan writes is not defined in terms of the fact of its ‘concrete particular. they all hang. even in anticipation. Aerostatic spacing 37 Conclusion The longer you linger in the park the more the balloon fades into the upground. as it does. aerostatic thing-power is not reducible to the terms of semiotic significance: nor is it to be understood primarily in terms of the production and circulation of imagined geographies. And. including balloons and aerostats. from world-map to world-map. According to change. But up and down – albeit thrice – in a tethered balloon? What kind of a strange journey is this? While obviously vertical. Yet while always in composition. And you might begin to film this balloon. these kinds of journeys are never just imaginative: they are ‘voyages through a plurality of spaces. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . such imagined geographies can become participants in the differential inflation or deflation of the atmospheres of expectancy and hope through which specific aerostatic vehicles Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. Put another way. the affective materiality of an aerostatic body also has a certain kind of force defined in terms of its individuated consistency – the fact of its ‘hanging there’. involving a ‘technology of vehicles and communication’. Crucially. are you filming a balloon? In a remarkable piece of cartographic writing. following the warp and woof’ (1975. as the work of Poe and Verne illustrates. Along this surface. Serres is concerned specifically with the strange journeys about which Jules Verne writes. inflation and buoyancy. to speak of aerostatic spacing than of aerostatic space – for aerostatic spacing enfolds different ways of being and becoming lighter than air. inflections and extrusions might appear – as they do on Barthelme’s balloon – affording opportunities for thinking aerostatic space. blown gently by the breeze along the surface of one of a series of regular rectangular pools. and without ever bearing the weight of a universal aerostatic subject-position. other details begin to distract: a small. from map to map. even if. blue balloon perhaps. It is one thing to cross a continent or circle a globe in a balloon. by means of an exfoliated multiplicity of maps. perhaps it is best to think of it as a series of movements around and along the surface of the process of things becoming lighter than air. Thinking this spacing requires a recognition that aerostatic things move between the logics of a processual materialism and the force of what Jane Bennett calls ‘thing-power’. Michel Serres (1975) invites us to consider strange journeys. these terms designating both relations of materiality to its own becoming and a vocabulary of affective vectors. 177). from circle to circle. however. It is more appropriate. bulges. One must lose oneself from space to space. sir. in French: why. For Serres. And a small boy might watch you watching a balloon and be prompted to ask. even the journey of tethered verticality along a tensile cable might open onto a multiplicity of modes of thinking about aerostatic space. In this way. folds. along the thread. the affective materiality of aerostatic spacing is transversal to process and thing. It moves through logics of envelopment. perhaps through the sight of the helium balloon ungripped. and most obviously. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 . this paper has also suggested that the sensing-spaces of aerostatic things are always more than visual. exemplifies this. As such. it is possible to have felt the sense – in potential – of this uplift. and are seen escaping skyward into the atmosphere. to enchant and to disturb.8 Even without travelling in a balloon. through the affective vectors of which the movement of things becoming lighter than air are generative. The role of art and architecture is particularly important here. bustling ‘Burble’ that sways in the evening sky. assemble and control an immense rippling. 7) whose power is defined in terms of their capacity to draw in and redistribute the relations between bodies moving at different speeds and with different degrees of consistency. of course.10 Equally. Clearly. The voiceover observes that each ‘balloon represents 50 grams of greenhouse gas’. this sensing is felt – sometimes only in anticipation – as much as it is seen. First.9 Second. in response to the crowd interacting below. then.38 Derek P McCormack move. inert and baneful things’ (Hennequin in Werner 2005. 2007). as part of an ongoing differentiation of the geographies of airspace (Adey et al. This narration of aerostatic spacing is not. Important here is the ongoing significance of aerostatic things as technologies for monitoring and making visible processes of atmospheric circulation and change through the use of weather balloons. exhaustive. glowing. and in ways that complicate the distinction between the physical and the human (see also Sloterdijk 2005). moving skyward in untethered ascent. or the desire for an effort-free elevated viewpoint. and in ‘Burble London’ (2007). produced as an initiative of the Victoria State Government in Australia. And in working towards this. the form of which the public has themselves designed. to utopian dreams of lighter than air inflatable cities and structures in the work of figures such as Peter Cook. 2007). and in ways that connect with other concerns within and beyond the discipline. insofar as aerostatic thing-power is sensed. By way of conclusion. The ‘Black balloon’ campaign features helium-filled balloons emerging from a variety of domestic appliances. Ron Herron and Graham Stevens (Alison et al. vision is crucial to these sensingspaces: yet vision is always enfolded into the torsional configurations of movement and stillness of which the world consists (Deleuze 1993.11 As the advert unfolds. Hasque describes this work thus: In Open Burble. In these terms inflation. the present paper has endeavoured to demonstrate that the affective materiality of aerostatic bodies does not just involve the presence and circulation of benign objects of amusement and distraction: aerostatic space – itself always in variable composition – is populated also by ‘terrifying. A 2005 TV advertising campaign. exists at such a large scale that it is able to compete visually in an urban context with the skyscrapers that surround it. This massive structure. deflation and buoyancy might be understood – and felt – as simultaneously affective and material. Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020 -2754 © 2009 The Author. the question of how aerostatic things have been implicated in all kinds of spatial visions and experiences could be developed further – from the mass balloon races of the early twentieth century (Holt 2006) to military airships and barrage balloons. aerostatic things have been used as a way of rendering visible the atmosphere as a zone of public concern. Wylie 2005). always in excess of dreams of transcendence. members of the public come together to compose. the role aerostatic things play in attempts to render explicit the materiality of air and atmosphere could be developed further. Visitors could call the phones. Aerostatic thing-power can be apprehended in part. distribution and circulation of affective atmospheres. as the work of Usman Haque illustrates. an act which transformed the electromagnetic relations – and also colour – within the ‘cloud’. Indeed it is only by developing a more expanded notion of sensing-spacing that the more disquieting affectivities of things in differential complexes of movement and stillness can be apprehended. Each balloon contained LEDs and a mobile phone. In ‘Sky Ear’ (2004) Haque released a ‘cloud’ of 1000 helium balloons into the air at the Greenwich Maritime Museum in London. more and more balloons appear. to amuse. It consists of the capacity for certain processes to become generative of bodies with the capacity to distract. it is worth pointing to three lines along which such an account might be developed further. And the visions and visibilities of aerostatic spacing are always emerging from and within the processual materiality of aerostatic thing-power. Crucially. Such work could also examine the relations between the processual logics of aerostatic things and the emergence. This work was developed further in ‘Open Burble’ (2006) in which a similar cloud was released above the sky as part of the Singapore Biennale. as Luce Irigaray (2002) has argued. but would take as its point of departure the claim that both are always already miscible (see also Ingold 2006). All errors and omissions are my own. 3 Indeed. Alison Blunt and three referees for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper. but to the best of my knowledge this copyright has lapsed. prior to the experiments by Charles.Aerostatic spacing 39 and the ‘average home creates 200 000 balloons every year’. Notes 1 Aérophile operates a number of similar aerostats in a various cities. By narrating an account of aerostatic spacing as an ongoing process. The remaining photographs in this paper were taken by myself. there are a range of ways in which such a geopoetics of air can be apprehended – through the distinctive qualities of atmosphere. thinking about aerostatic things and aerostatic space has the potential to contribute to the ongoing elaboration of a geopoetics of air. 4 See http:/ /www. from which aerostatic bodies emerge with a distinctive kind of affective thing-power – enveloped. Such a geopoetics would involve the apprehension not so much of a space in and through which different forms of life move: rather. however. particularly in China. Third. 5 This experience also anticipates the sense of weightlessness of which space flight is generative. Nor would this geopoetics operate on the basis of rigid juxtaposition of air with ground. hydrogen had only ever been produced in minute quantities: it was the very promise of aerostatic flight that generated an imperative to produce large volumes of the gas by mixing sulphuric acid with iron filings (Austerfield 1990. smog. is so easily forgotten in the context of attempts to think through place as ground. one that might be contested critically in various ways. The paper draws upon research funded by a British Academy Small Grant. My thanks to Peter Adey for suggestions about literature of aeromobility. I have made every effort to identify the copyright owner of Keaton’s The Balloonatic. exhaust. Langins 1983). Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 34 25–41 2009 ISSN 0020-2754 © 2009 The Author. haze and breath – each of which mixes the affective and material through logics that demand the cultivation of distinctive repertoires of thinking spacing in processual terms. of course. and finally. is that it illustrates how the thing-power of aerostatic bodies can become a lively participant in efforts to render visible the materiality of climate change – in that sense the black balloons are part of the constitution of the atmosphere as an issue around which a particular affective-material public emerges (see Marres forthcoming). that element which. As Steven Connor (2007) has argued. I am also grateful to the Victorian Government’s Department of Sustainability and Environment for permission to reproduce a still from their ‘You have the power: Save energy’ TV campaign. 2 This. Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2009 .com/article/15/25/tetheredballoons-around-the-world-in-19th-century (last accessed 16 December 2007). air would be apprehended as a constitutive and turbulent participant in the distributed natures of lively worlds. inflated and buoyant – this paper has endeavoured to contribute to the cultivation of such repertoires. Acknowledgements I am grateful to Gail Davies. This ad has an obviously political purpose. Its significance here. is not to ignore the earlier existence of sky-lanterns in Asia.aerophile. where they are often known as Kongming lanterns. mobility. Migayrou F and Spiller N eds 2007 Future city: experiment and utopia in architecture Thames and Hudson.fr/web/3641stratospheric-balloons.co. the French Centre Nationale D’Études Spatiales.com/News/ 663845/Brand-barometer---Balloon-ads-really-off-Ford (last accessed 15 March 2008). 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