Sky Orchestra

Artist Luke Jerram working in collaboration with international hot air balloon pilot Peter Dalby and composer Dan Jones.

click here to open audio slide show
featuring music composed for Sky Orchestra

The Sky Orchestra is an ongoing research project that explores how one can perceive an artistic experience while asleep. It is an experimental artwork bringing together performance and music to create visual audio installations within the air and within the mind.

Sky Orchestra are developing music specifically for sleeping people which is delivered out of the sky. Seven hot air balloons, each with speakers attached, take off at dawn to fly across a city. Each balloon plays a different element of the musical score creating a massive audio landscape.

"Like whales calling in the ocean, the same sounds may be heard in quick succession passing from one balloon to another across the sky ..."

Many hundreds of people experience the Sky Orchestra event live as the balloons fly over their homes at dawn. The airborne project is both a vast spectacular performance as well as an intimate, personal experience. The music is audible, both consciously and subconsciously, to all those in the balloon's flight paths.

Dream Concert

An ongoing Sky Orchestra research project, participants in The Dream Concert experience an artwork located on the edge of sleep and within their sleeping minds. It is also an opportunity for the artists to experiment and for scientists to collect vital dream data for their research.

At midnight on 28th April 2004, 120 guests packed into the Think Tank science centre in Birmingham for a mass experimental concert to last throughout the night.
Conceived by the artist, Luke Jerram, the composition was written by Sky Orchestra composer Dan Jones.

Sleep Psychologists Chris Alford and Jennie Parker from The University of the West of England devised the structure of the sound based score. The composition was performed to the sleeping audience in surround sound.

For further information on the project, see the Sky Orchestra and Dream Concert pages on Luke Jerrams web site - www.lukejerram.com

Sky Orchestra is managed by DA2 and the project is supported by: The Music Room, Phoenix Balloons and NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)

The Dream Concert was a part of the Fierce Festival and was managed by DA2 and Think Tank. The Dream Concert was sponsored by: Think Tank, IKEA, NESTA, Fierce Festival and DA2.