Balloon Maestro

SYMBOLISING INSPIRATION: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE BALLOON
by Sean Rooney

AAAARRRRGGGH! The exasperating world of inspiration! The unseen force of creativity which brings worlds into being is the most fundamental energy, yet the most difficult to articulate. Humans participate in creativity in a most peculiar way; in our species, the creative urge becomes conscious of itself. Call it art, call it science…we seek to understand and symbolize the world around us. When we do this well, we say we are ‘inspired’.
The balloon is one of our species original symbols, and it has a special relationship with inspiration. For a child, simply blowing up a balloon can make her face stretch into a smile. For an astronomy student, asked to consider a balloon-being-inflated as a simile for the early expansion of the universe, a balloon can blow her mind. For a cartoon character, a balloon is the medium for self-expression; it shows her thoughts and words. For me, balloons are the stuff I make art with. The flexibility of the balloon as both object and concept is amazing. They really are the ‘shit’ (incidentally, along with ‘shit’, ‘balloon’ is one of the few words that can function as noun, verb AND adjective).
The first balloon was pre-historical. Sometime, tens of thousands of years ago, maybe more, somebody reached into the messy insides of a recently-deceased, medium-sized mammal, pulled out its bladder, put it to their mouth, and blew it up. At some point during the inflation process, the pressure and the slipperiness caused the bladder-balloon to squirt away and jet around the room, making rude, yet amusing noises. People laughed. So he did it again. At some point, just when the whole practice was getting a little tiresome, the poor, over-blown bladder exploded in his face. People laughed again, this time louder. A clown was born. He (I am assuming a male identity- doesn’t this stuff just sound like a guy?) continued doing this balloon-schtick until one day, he figured out how to tie a knot. This sealed the deal. The bladder-balloon became a bona fide cultural technology.
Unfortunately because of their ephemeral nature, balloons do not show up in the archaeological record, but anthropologists report widespread use of balloons in traditional tribal cultures. In Eskimo culture (Aleutian Islands) the use of balloons reached a peak of symbolic completeness. The bladders of seals were the prerogative of the Shaman. When a hunter killed a seal, he would bring it immediately to the Shaman, who would first take the spirit of the animal into his own soul for safekeeping, then distribute the meat to the hunters, the skin to the women, and the eyeballs as special treats for the kids. He would keep the bladder for himself, storing it in a cool place along with all the other bladders from seals hunted that year. At the years end/beginning, a thanksgiving celebration was given to show the peoples’ gratitude for the food, clothing and life which the seals had provided. This was a real party, complete with balloon decorations. The Shaman would take each bladder, inflate it with the spirit of its former owner, and tie it together with other balloons to create a chain that was draped around the room- a rare instance where the guests of honour actually doubled as décor. Songs were sung in honour of the seals. At party’s end, the spirit balloons were put back into the sea so that they might seek mothers, to be reborn. Hopefully, they had such a good time at the party that they want to return for a visit, someday.
During the first century BCE, balloons themselves experienced a rebirth in the form of a new material. Instead of animal guts, these balloons were made from glass. For centuries, glass vessels had been made the hard way- by carving crystal. Then, an unknown glass artist, somewhere in Egypt, had an inspiration: he inflated a glob of molten glass on the end of a hollow tube, like a balloon! The result was a revolution in drinking right across the Roman Empire. Cheap glass vessels for all. . It also marks the first time balloons become truly artistic objects, with Syrian glassmakers developing techniques and creating beautiful objects that still arouse admiration in modern glass artists.
Meanwhile, in China, paper was being developed. The official date registered in Chinese records is 104 AD. Historians assert that the primary purpose of paper was for writing, but I believe that the material was originally developed to make balloons for parties. Written records might indicate otherwise, but then…. Historians wrote those records, didn’t they? We know that paper balloons played an important role in ceremony. Intricately decorated, with a flame inside to provide lift, they were released in great numbers on special occasions. The evolution of paper balloons in China moved through a military phase when incendiary devices were attached to the balloons. The balloons got bigger, and stronger.
Over a thousand years later, after a cross-cultural transplantation, and modifications by the Montgolfier brothers, the humble paper balloon, powered by hot air, lifted humans aloft in 1783. After millennia of dreaming about it, the human species finally took flight. The balloon became a symbol of human imagination and spirit. Funny story: In 1804, a balloon (hydrogen filled- like the Hindenburg) was released to celebrate Napoleons’ coronation. It was big and beautiful, floating magnificently above Paris, carrying a great gilded crown in the sky. Then the wind came and blew the balloon almost to Rome. By what can only be called a wild coincidence, the balloon- crown and all- came crashing down the next day on the tomb of Nero. Napoleon, a superstitious man, was not pleased.
A few decades later, in 1824, with physical speculation about the nature of gases intensifying, Michael Faraday, the famous physicist, invented the rubber balloon as a way to isolate and measure the expansion of gases released during certain reactions. This was a momentous moment in the history of balloons. For the first time, a balloon had the elasticity of a bladder, but without the ‘ick’ factor. The idea of a balloon had finally found a medium it could grow with. The development of vulcanisation- a process for curing rubber invented by Charles Goodyear and patented in 1844, opened new possibilities by making rubber more stable. The first mass produced balloon was the pneumatic tire. Talk about re-inventing the wheel!!! This device allowed heavy vehicles to roll over bumpy surfaces at high rates of speed; it paved the way for the automobile. Balloons became serious business then.
In what I like to think of as a dialectic response to these materialistic advances in balloon technology, the rubber balloon as a toy and decoration emerged at the turn of the century. A manufacturing process involving dipped forms (later used to make latex condoms) was developed. Large numbers of balloons were made, in different shapes and sizes. The rubber balloon became familiar to children all over the world. Often, it was filled with hydrogen so it would float. For obvious reasons, the gas of choice eventually changed to helium.
Science was not forgotten…In the first decades of the last century, the balloon found itself at the beginning of two relatively new disciplines: Meteorology, where balloons played a central role in observation of atmosphere, and cosmology, where the idea of a balloon expanding became a metaphor for the idea of an expanding universe. Balloons also went to war. In WW1, they were used for military observation. At first, balloonists respected each other, sometimes even waving to each other. As the war went on, they started throwing bricks. Between the wars the great balloon story was the development of the zeppelin as a form of transportation, and the tragic crash of the Hindenburg. In WW2, the British deployed large numbers of balloons on their coastlines which suspended heavy cables. Known as ‘balloon barrages’ (balloonsperes), they prevented planes from flying below the radar.
After the war, when rubber production resumed (the Japanese had taken the key rubber producing areas in 1940), balloons really hit form. A new type of balloon which was long and skinny was produced. This balloon could be twisted. The art of balloon sculpting was born.
The evolution of rubber balloons as an art form is itself a whole other story. From simple one-balloon creatures that sort of looked like dogs, they have developed into complex multi-balloon sculptures; from a simple balloon floating on a ribbon, to visually impressive Gala décor; from a balloon making an annoying squealing noise, to a fully functional, balloon-based pipe organ….the medium has proven to be exceptionally flexible, susceptible to inspiration, shall we say. But then, given the history of the balloon, is anyone surprised?