Lines of Flight

Can the act of gliding also perform as an act of writing? The sweeping movements of a glider aircraft through the sky already create circular traces in GPS tracking applications—an asemic script that is written at the intersection between wind, wing, and piloting skill. Can such gestures provide the basis for more complex acts of inscription, in which human and atmospheric agencies combine to parse the vital experience of flight into poetry?

Lines of Flight is a project which, over the course of Spring-Summer 2023, will explore the potential for translating the winding routes of soaring gliders into poetic text using digital tracking technologies. As a form of writing that is negotiated through a multitude of airborne forces and volumes, this project will consider what such processes can tell us about human relationships with the more-than-human world.

Publications

This project was instigated at the generous invitation of writer Dr. J.R. Carpenter, as part of the research project Weather Reports Wind as Media, Model, Experience, whose members also include Prof. Ryan Bishop, Prof. Birgit Schneider, Prof. Jussi Parikka, and Maximilian Hepach. An interactive, creative-critical exploration of the project will form part of a special issue of the journal Media+Environment, and it is currently awaiting publication.

Lines of Flight is discussed as part of an article by Jussi Parikka, Paolo Patelli and May Ee Wong, “Ecocritique between Landscape and Data: The Environmental Audiotour” (2024), published in the Electronic Book Review. Available here.