Saturday morning

The experiment that I wanted to pursue presents more and more challenge. The site manager whom I called this morning would not let me fly anything near the site and he also said that I could not enter the building to do my survey...

Since I already got the equipments.... I thought I'll just fly it at the park opposite the site and what I discovered was quite scary and surprising!

From the footage below, I will show you exactly what happened:





My Iphone lifted straight up in both trials but when it reach a certain height, it suddenly moves dramatically towards railway line. VERY SCARY. Because when I tried to retrieve it, there was a pretty strong resistance and I was afraid that my line would cut the laces (or even cause some balloons to wonder off and let my iphone drop <-- across the rail tracks, or worse, on the rail tracks...) so I had to slowly pull it back, and carefully to avoid putting too much tension on the line.

In the second video, my line got stuck (for a few seconds) in the trees, while my iphone is still quite far away from me, but luckily I was able to get my iphone back!

What I discovered in this exercise is the existence and magnitude of micro-climate in our urban space. Wind was actually blowing the opposite direction at the site (as I experienced) to where my balloons are wondering off! and it is quite strong!

This phenomenon is already giving ideas about how to change my first matrix (as it seems it is quite hard to achieve what I previously thought was manageable to do). There simply is too much unforeseen dangers and laws which will not allow me to do such experiments.

Overall it was a very pleasant experience as many people quoted that I have made a good start for a Saturday for them, and took photos with me, the balloons and had a chat with me about my project. It is a good way to engage with the community and kind of communicate to them that we are not just stubborn people who just draw and stuff, but are actively involved in the community and our design are heavily based on observation and experiment on the real world.