Drifting Voicemail, Found Sounds Stories

“A simple but clever installation in Tallinn, “Weather Report” by Janek Schaeffer, consisted of helium balloons and an MP3 player/cell phone. Recordings gathered by starting a cell phone call and then sending the phone up into the atmosphere attached to a weather balloon while recording the call on voicemail are remixed with other weather noises, to be played back on the cell phone in the installation.” from ISEA 2004: Art Report by scott @ 10:10 pm, 09.05.04.

From Schaeffer’s web site: “The weather balloons were used in 3 main ways. Firstly one icy winters morning I attached a mobile phone to receive and send low resolution sound, letting it float away from the surface of a frozen lake. Secondly using a digitaldictaphone I made time lapse recordings of the sky by floating it 500ft above my lush metropolitan neighbourhood. Lastly a few all American friends and I set out to shootthe balloon down late one June afternoon leaving the sound to parachute back to earth. I let the recordings speak for themselves, no effects, no eq, just straight cut & splice collage where you can hear the edges of time. Some other sounds collected include: underwater ice skaters; flapping; old meteorological kit; leaf blowers; repairing weather damage; various 60’s archive audio; melting ice, ski across snow, Minnesota forecasts on radio, in the car and on TV; Tornado chasing & test equipment; snow flakes landing on mic; squeaky tree; National Weather Service balloon launch; walkie talkie tones from my Science Museum workshop etc. Oh, and all temperatures in Farenheight…

The result is a highly compressed Found Sound story, heard as a drifting voicemail message from the weather balloon. A hybrid documentary collected and edited outdoors, where it is designed to be heard walking with headphones… so.. go find a Walkman!”