NORWICH.- In May unmanned aircraft will enter the lower airspace of the city of Norwich and will be targeting the consciences of the people beneath them. The installation is by internationally acclaimed artists Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen (collectively known as HeHe) whose urban installations are renowned for playing with scale.

The artists hope the miniature Airbus 380’s (1:200 scale), which will be seen by thousands of pedestrians using the city, will challenge the everyday perception of low cost air travel and highlight its effect on global warming.

The work entitled ‘Plane Jam’ will be sited in the centre of Norwich. The planes will release remote controlled emissions at various times throughout the day. These emissions will be highly visible thereby drawing attention to the high-cost of low-cost air travel that is damaging our fragile atmosphere, the envelope of gases surrounding the earth.

We never actually see the harmful toxins emitted by aircraft. They are invisible. The contrails or vapour trails we can see following aircraft are composed of only water droplets whereas the toxic and harmful emissions escape our attention because they cannot be seen by the naked eye.

The illusion of flight will be achieved by an imperceptible and ingenious network of high tensile steel cables stretched between buildings. The flight paths of the planes has been carefully pre-mapped by the artists for maximum impact from the pedestrian streets below.

By placing aircraft into the lower atmosphere of the Norwich skies ‘Plane Jam’ makes it impossible for the casual passer-by to ignore the issues around air pollution and air travel. The artist’s miniaturisation of the AB 380 aircraft will literally place the jumbo passenger jet into a different relationship with a person on the ground. When seen against the backdrop of the sky, moving slowly between two buildings, the viewer might mistake the mini-craft for a real plane flying high above the city, were it not for the disproportionate vapour trail behind it.

Science Art collaboration
The project was conceived during the artists’ residency at the Environmental Sciences Department at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. The project was inspired by the open wide skies in Norwich and discussions with researchers, including Professor Peter Brimblecombe an Atmospheric Chemist, about the phenomena of the clean skies in the UK during the flight restrictions in the aftermath of the Icelandic Eyjafjöll volcano eruption. Helen Evans says: “These discussions led us to think about the curious visual paradox of air traffic pollution: When planes fly high in the atmosphere the clean component of their emissions are visible (as the water vapour condenses), but their dirty emissions remain invisible and imperceptible.”