“Shall we be thought mad?” The Doomed 1897 Balloon Expedition to the Arctic...

We’re kicking off Balloon Fiesta in style! Join 3D Immersive Arts NM and the Mirehaven VR Club at the Albuquerque Balloon Museum for the Virtual Reality Balloon Experience.

Our group explores how stories, art, and performance come alive inside immersive 3D spaces. So here’s the question: Does the VR Balloon Experience at the Balloon Museum count as 3D immersive art?

To spark discussion, I’ll share my own experiment: The White Silence, a short radioplay and 360° video about the tragic 1897 Andrée Arctic balloon expedition. (Watch here in VR or on your phone: YouTube link).

We’ll talk about immersion, narration, visuals, and the artistic potential of this type of work. Could projects like this lead to fully staged VR plays with live actors?

At the same time, our Spatial Computing sibling will be asking: what would it take to build a ballooning VR game or experience technically?

How Three Meetups All Fit Together

• 2–3 PM: VR New Mexico: experience VR ballooning as a fan and user.
• 3–4 PM (two parallel paths, er, conversational clumps...):
• 3D Immersive Arts NM: explore storytelling, performance, and artistic immersion.
• Spatial Computing: tackle technical design and development challenges.

There is a modest fee to enter the Balloon Museum. The VR Balloon Experience is included in this fee. Before and after your VR experience, be sure to visit the many other exhibits at the Balloon Museum.

P.S. “Shall we be thought mad?” was written by August Andrée in his journal, just before he died. In The Ice Balloon (2012, Goodreads), Alec Wilkinson recounts how Andrée was found, thirty-three years later...

"Near the boat was a body. It was leaning against a rock, with its legs extended, and it was frozen. On its feet were boots, partly covered in snow. Very little but bones remained of the torso and arms. The head was missing, and clothes were scattered around.... He and the others carefully opened the jacket the corpse was wearing, and when they saw a large monogram A they knew whom they were looking at — S. A. Andrée, the Swede who, thirty-three years earlier, on July 11, 1897, had ascended with two companions in a hydrogen balloon to discover the North Pole."