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.

Join Luke Jerram for an overview of the project with Dan Williams and Oliver Humpage who will explain how they approached the technical challenges of tracking the balloons.

This event is supported by Bristol City Council.

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

Do you want to find out what is going on at the Pervasive Media Studio? Are you interested in meeting our residents, talking about a specific project or curious about pervasive media? Why not pack a sandwich and join us for one of our Lunchtime Talks and Open Studio Friday.

Lunchtime Talks are informal presentations by Studio residents and associates. They normally take place at 1pm on Friday, are free and open to everybody who’s interested in what we do.

After the Talk, we also invite you to stay with us for the afternoon to continue the conversation or work on your own projects. We provide chairs, tables, wireless and a great space. You bring what you need to work with (laptop/mobile). Our open afternoons close at 5pm.

Let us know if you haven’t been to the Studio before and we'll be happy to show you around! Send an email to Jason@pmstudio.co.uk and we will meet you at 12.30pm for a quick tour.