Join us for this free and informal talk, to hear artist Luke Jerram describe his latest Sky Orchestra performance. Watershed's Dan Williams and Oliver Humpage will also describe their experience of working on the project, including the technical challenges of tracking hot air balloons in flight.

When: 13:00 - 14:00, Friday 23rd September
Where: Pervasive Media Studio (how to find us)

Sky Orchestra delivers music to sleeping people from the sky. Created by artist Luke Jerram with composition from Dan Jones, the balloons take off at dawn and dusk with speakers attached, each one playing elements of one musical score, creating a massive audio landscape.

The latest Sky Orchestra performance took place in London to herald a year to go to the 2012 Games. The Mayor of London Boris Johnson teamed up with London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) to bring the project to the city between 22 - 27 July 2011. Read more and see video from the performance here.

For these performances, Watershed commissioned Play Nicely to create a new website for Sky Orchestra, supported by Bristol City Council. The website featured live tracking of the balloons via an Android, Google Maps and AWS CloudFront based system created by Dan Williams and Oliver Humpage of Watershed. The tracking system recorded the balloon's GPS position every few seconds and used the mobile network to relay this information to the web site, where balloons and their music could be seen and heard by anyone in the world, and their flights recorded for posterity.

This Lunchtime Talk is part of Open Studio Friday, which takes place at Pervasive Media Studio every week.

This event is supported by Bristol City Council.