Floating Video
It’s been a long standing desire of ours to tie a video camera to helium balloons then fly it around town. This experiment set out to do just that. What we found out is that you must have one giant helium balloon. No amount of regular sized balloons will float a small electronic device because the latex of the balloons is too heavy. It did make the camera very light, so we were able to throw it up into the air and watch it float to the ground. We used three cameras. One on the balloons and two more to document the process of trying to make it fly. Eventually we cut the camera free and watched as our balloons floated away. The end result was a 3-channel video installation at the International Center, Iowa City. The three DV decks were synced to play footage from the two cameras just as the balloon-camera footage abrubtly ended.
View the Quicktime version
warning: 18 mb file