Project Nimbus: Horses In The Clouds
Last weekend on a hot and sunny afternoon we spent two hours in a darkened room in Leeds Museum along with 250 or so other people. We were there to hear artist Dave Lynch and chemical physicist Mike Nix share the story of Project Nimbus, a mad-cap crazy idea to project moving images onto clouds from the ground, sea level and aircraft including: planes, paragliders & hot air balloons. Leeds Inspired had awarded the project a small grant earlier in the year and we were looking forward to seeing how Project Nimbus had evolved.
Outside the museum people were drinking Pimms and watching tennis; inside the museum we were taken on an emotional journey of imagination, chance encounters, moments of genius and terrifying risks. At times it was touch and go as to whether Dave, Mike and their supporting crew would ever succeed in flying through the clouds with a galloping horse (using footage created by 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge), but we were rewarded with seven minutes of beautiful, glitchy footage of an ethereal green steed rushing through the sky. You know we weren't expecting this film to be a weepy but it's safe to say there wasn't a dry eye in the house that afternoon.
In the past seven days the story of the galloping horse has been featured in news reports all over world and found its way onto the homepage of New Scientist.
As the project is propelled into the media stratosphere it's good to remember that Project Nimbus exists because of an incredible collaboration between artists, scientists, aviationists, makers, technicians, individuals and organisations - all of whom were willing to take a gamble in one way or another - and, as Dave Lynch says, "We all have a relationship to the clouds, the sense of looking up and dreaming, we hope Project Nimbus inspires people to believe in big ideas and consider that through collaboration we can all push the boundaries of what we know."