ASYLUM

* Artists Airshow

I should (have now) retrodate this back to 12 September 04, on which day Arts Catalyst ran something called Artists Airshow — a mixture of art gallery, guided tour, homebrew experimentation and presentations at a particularly interesting location in Farnborough: the Royal Aeronautical Engineering Works. Situated next to the airstrip, these are now disused, but formerly were classified top secret research facilities from WW2 up until the 80s.

The focus of the tours were on the wind tunnels, of which there were several, varying from a small (4×3ft) chamber for testing scale models, which you could peer into, up to the vast (24ft) tunnel, which you could wander round, squeeze through the gaps between the vast aerofoil guidance vanes, in the return tunnel, and find yourself stood under the polished wooden blades of the turbine itself. Some seriously fun & impressive architecture, if you're a cold-war-secrecy dork like me.

The other focus, of course, was on the art itself. Here, not so impressive. There were some pieces that stood out though, in particular Escape Vehicle #6 which was, essentially, a weather balloon with an office chair dangling off it on a long boom, with a camera, GPS module and transmitter all attached. This was duly launched — second time lucky, the first time failed as the balloon did indeed Escape from the rest of the Vehicle and disappear — and then monitored on a big back-projection monitor inside one of the research buildings, as it travelled "to the edge of space" (actually, about 60,000ft, but still. It was pretty spooky to watch the office chair spinning in the stratosphere and eventually being torn up by the winds).