Environmental Artist Tomás Saraceno Successfully Flies a Solar-Powered Hot Air Balloon Over Argentina, Breaking Six World Records

Tomás Saraceno just earned a
spot in the Guinness Book of World Records—many times
over.

The Argentinian artist broke six
world records when his fully solar-powered hot air balloon
successfully took flight over a salt lake in Argentina this week.
The Berlin-based, Argentinian artist’s project was commissioned by
K-Pop superstars BTS as part of their new global public art
initiative.

The artist has been experimenting with creating a hot air
balloon fueled only by the heat of the sun and the wind for 20
years. During a test flight on January 25, the balloon was
lifted to a height of 892.7 feet for 1 hour and 21 minutes,
crossing a distance of 1.58 miles. The journey set world records
with the World Air Sports
Federation for
altitude, distance, and duration of a hot air balloon flight
powered without propane. (The three records counted twice, once in
the general category and once in the “female” category, because the
pilot, Leticia Marques, is a woman.)

On January 28, the official
debut of Saraceno’s flying sculpture over the Salinas Grandes salt
lake was live-streamed to some 26,000 viewers as its pilot was
lifted to a height of 577 feet and flew for 37 minutes, traversing
some 1.59 miles, breaking the earlier records for
distance.

Powered solely by the sun and
air, without use of lithium,
solar panels, helium, or fossil fuels, the project is the historic
outcome of an interdisciplinary collaboration between experts in
the fields of art, science, and environmental activism. Saraceno’s
balloon was filled with pedal-powered fans and the air inside was
heated by the sun’s rays, which were amplified by the white surface
of the salt lake plane below. 

The artwork is named
Aerocene Pacha, after Saraceno’s Aerocene Foundation
and the Andean concept
of the cosmos, pacha, which links what lies beneath the
earth’s surface to the furthest reaches of the universe.

The flight was a “long-dreamed
of journey” for the artist, who says in a statement that his record
attempt—completed 50 years after man first landed on the moon—is a
“radically different” kind of voyage. “Our landing here will be one small step in the
air, one giant leap for this planet and its climate,” Saraceno
says.

The artist hopes that the
experiment will contribute in a small way to shifting how we regard
mobility. Instead of always aiming to go “faster, further,
quicker,” Aerocene Pacha aligns itself more closely to the
natural rhythms of the planet, with distance and speed entirely
dependent on the sun and wind.

At a time when the public is
becoming increasingly aware of the negative environmental impact of
air travel, the artist and his collaborators aim to foster patience
and pave the way for a more ethical approach that relies on
the earth’s natural
energy.

The experiment was commissioned
by the K-Pop superstars BTS. The South Korean band launched a global public
art project called CONNECT, BTS earlier this month, which will
support art projects in five cities around the world.

Saraceno says his approach to
fossil-free flying also
aims to address the 33 indigenous communities in the region
surrounding the Salinas Grandes. The rush to mine lithium for
eco-friendly batteries is polluting their drinking water,
and Saraceno’s balloon was marked with the phrase
“water and life are worth more than lithium” in
Spanish. Representatives from four indigenous communities,
Tres Pozos, Pozo Colorado, San Miguel del Colorado, and Inti Killa
de Tres Morros, took part in the festivities—as did a few
Argentinian BTS fans, who concluded the flight by singing songs by
the K-Pop superstars.

Saraceno has produced a series
of films chronicling each stage of the journey, which will be
screened at Centro Cultural Kirchner in Buenos Aires from January
31 to March 22.

The artist is already at work on
his next project: creating a fully solar-powered balloon that can
also fly at night using retained heat from the sun and earth.
Saraceno hopes to travel around the world in the balloon, for which
he has already created a semi-transparent silver
prototype.

The post Environmental Artist Tomás Saraceno Successfully
Flies a Solar-Powered Hot Air Balloon Over Argentina, Breaking Six
World Records appeared first on artnet News.