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In Atmospheric Things Derek P. McCormack explores how atmospheres are imagined, understood, and experienced through experiments with a deceptively simple object: the balloon. Since the invention of balloon flight in the late eighteenth century, balloons have drawn crowds at fairs and expositions, inspired the visions of artists and writers, and driven technological development from meteorology to military surveillance. By foregrounding the distinctive properties of the balloon, McCormack reveals its remarkable capacity to disclose the affective and meteorological dimensions of atmospheres. Drawing together different senses of the object, the elements, and experience, McCormack uses the balloon to show how practices and technologies of envelopment allow atmospheres to be generated, made meaningful, and modified. He traces the alluring entanglement of envelopment in artistic, political, and technological projects, from the 2009 Pixar movie Up and Andy Warhol’s 1966 installation Silver Clouds to the use of propaganda balloons during the Cold War and Google's experiments with delivering internet access with stratospheric balloons. In so doing, McCormack offers new ways to conceive of, sense, and value the atmospheres in which life is immersed.
Table des matières
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Envelopment 17
2. Sensing 35
3. Allure 55
4. Release 79
5. Volume 101
6. Sounding 121
7. Tensions 145
8. Hail 171
9. Elements 195
Notes 219
Bibliography 259
Index 279
A propos de l'auteur
Derek P. McCormack is Professor of Cultural Geography at Oxford University, author of Refrains for Moving Bodies: Experience and Experiment in Affective Spaces, also published by Duke University Press, and coauthor of Key Concepts in Urban Geography.
Résumé
Derek P. McCormack analyzes artistic, political, and technological uses of the balloon to show how its properties and capacities are central to understanding how we sense, perceive, and modify meteorological and affective atmospheres as well as the force of the atmosphere in modern life.
