Sky Ear, designed by architect and artist Usman Haque, is a nonrigid 'cloud' made up of hundreds of glowing helium balloons that engage the strange hidden aural beauty of electromagnetic space. From it are suspended mobile phones, brightly coloured LEDS and electromagnetic sensors that emit different coloured lights when activated. These miniature sensor circuits (simple gaussmeters) detect levels of electromagnetic radiation at a variety of frequencies. When they are activated the sensor circuits cause the LEDS to illuminate. Sky Ear, in the planning for three years, took its maiden voyage at Fribourg, Switzerland, in spring 2004 at the Belluard Bollwerk International Festival, prior to a formal and dramatic launch at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, in September, where this time the cloud climbed to a height of over 100 metres, watched by over 3,500 people. Released from its ground moorings, in Switzerland, the cloud slowly floated up into the sky, the balloons enclosed in a carbon-fibre and net structure 25 metres in diameter and tethered to the ground by six cables. Once fully risen, the balloons were held aloft at a height of 60 metres. As the cloud floated upwards, it glowed and flickered as it passed through varying radio- and microwave spaces. Haque, present on the site, described its effect as 'like a glowing jellyfish sampling the electromagnetic spectrum rather like a vertical radar sweep'.
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