The Sky Collective
— an online archive for kites in speculative currents
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participatory workshop series
ongoing
─=≡Σ((( ABSTRACT
The project ‘The Sky Collective – An Online Archive for Kites in Speculative Currents’ is a participatory workshop series and an accompanying online platform that together form a living digital archive of speculative kites. These so-called unflyable kites are collectively built with participants using found and repurposed materials, digitized through 3D scanning, and transferred onto the virtual sky of a designated website.
─=≡Σ((( CONCEPT
A kite is a lightweight flying device, usually made of fabric and sticks, held aloft by the wind and controlled from the ground by lines. Beyond being a playful object, it is a symbolic mediator between earth and sky, matter and imagination.
But what happens when kites don’t fly?
Through a workshop series participants create fragile, too-heavy, or deliberately unbalanced kites from salt dough, leftover and found materials (plastic warped by the sun, rusted metal, broken consumer goods, reflective foils, etc.). These unflyable kites will then be transformed into digital models through 3D scanning. The kites do not rise into the physical sky, but take off into another dimension, a virtual sky, becoming poetic objects that speak of failure, resistance and play.
Each unflyable kite becomes part of The Sky Collective, a digital community of impossible flights, virtually accessible and continuously growing through workshops, exhibitions and collaborations.
The project ‘The Sky Collective – An Online Archive for Kites in Speculative Currents’ is a participatory workshop series and an accompanying online platform that together form a living digital archive of speculative kites. These so-called unflyable kites are collectively built with participants using found and repurposed materials, digitized through 3D scanning, and transferred onto the virtual sky of a designated website.
─=≡Σ((( CONCEPT
A kite is a lightweight flying device, usually made of fabric and sticks, held aloft by the wind and controlled from the ground by lines. Beyond being a playful object, it is a symbolic mediator between earth and sky, matter and imagination.
But what happens when kites don’t fly?
Through a workshop series participants create fragile, too-heavy, or deliberately unbalanced kites from salt dough, leftover and found materials (plastic warped by the sun, rusted metal, broken consumer goods, reflective foils, etc.). These unflyable kites will then be transformed into digital models through 3D scanning. The kites do not rise into the physical sky, but take off into another dimension, a virtual sky, becoming poetic objects that speak of failure, resistance and play.
Each unflyable kite becomes part of The Sky Collective, a digital community of impossible flights, virtually accessible and continuously growing through workshops, exhibitions and collaborations.
︎
Workflow and digitized kites during the workshop at Mz*Baltazar’s Laboratory, Vienna, 2025