Fallen Angel
Projection-mapped weather balloons and a collapsed parachute replay a high-altitude launch as celebration turns into visible failure.
Fallen Angel is an installation by Alex May and Anna Dumitriu made for Ingenious and Fearless Companions at Birmingham Open Media in 2016. A cluster of weather balloons and the parachute meant to slow a rocket’s descent become both sculpture and evidence of a failed launch. Original footage from the High Altitude Bioprospecting rocket mission is projection-mapped across the balloons and paired with recordings of the team’s shift from celebration to alarm as the parachute fails to open.
Rather than restaging the event as spectacle, the work holds it in a suspended state between evidence and reconstruction. The launch survives as damaged equipment, moving image, and remembered sound, each one partial and unstable. That layering places the piece close to May’s wider practice, where technology does not simply preserve experience but changes how it is replayed, interpreted, and kept.
Additional notes
- Created for Ingenious and Fearless Companions at Birmingham Open Media, Birmingham, in 2016.
- Developed with Anna Dumitriu as part of the High Altitude Bioprospecting collective.
- Uses weather balloons from the HAB rocket launch and the parachute intended to slow the rocket’s descent.
- Projection-mapped with original launch footage and synchronised with audio recorded during the launch.