Week 05: How to Launch a Weather Balloon (and Fall Down a Conspiracy Hole)

what even is this project??

My guide is actually a satirical tutorial on how to consume TikTok content, using weather balloons as the subject. It starts legitimately - you're watching real DIY videos, step-by-step guides on weather balloon chasing (people who literally track and chase balloons after they start parachuting back to earth), how-tos on tracking weather balloon data from meteorologists. Actual useful information from actual hobbyists and scientists.

But as the narrator is "guiding us on how to interact with TikTok content," you watch the user start skipping. They're scrolling past the factual guide content faster and faster. Lingering on the conspiracy stuff. Climate activism turns into anti weather balloon launching radicalization. Suddenly we're deep in alien UFO balloon theories. The algorithm is doing its thing.

The narrator's voice starts drowning out under all the conspiracy audio. By the end it's full fever dream - we're watching a "live alien probing" on TikTok Live because that's where the algorithm took us.

Meanwhile there's this physical installation component - chains made from e-waste, fabric, a weather balloon that's purely decorative. It looks gorgeous while accomplishing absolutely nothing. The whole thing is about the gap between what we think we're doing on the platform (learning, being informed, taking action) and what's actually happening (falling down algorithm holes, consuming spectacle, mistaking aesthetic intervention for material change).

Weather balloons aren't the point. They're just the example. This could be about any topic where real information gets drowned out by the way we actually use these platforms.

Working titles:

• "This Weather Balloon Tutorial Won't Help You"

• "How to Track Weather Balloons (a TikTok guide)"

• "POV: researching weather balloons on TikTok at 3am"

• "Weather Balloon launch Tutorial (gone bad)"

• "what they dont want you to know about #weatherballoons"

• "I launched my own #weatherballoon and found the truth"

• "they keep taking down my video about this #weatherballoon"
  

who's this even for???

People who use TikTok the way most of us actually do

• people who reflexively trust tutorial content on TikTok (or any content for that matter)

• anyone algorithmically served "climate activism" content

• the person who's watched way too many confident DIY videos and doesn't question them anymore

• people already halfway down the conspiracy rabbit hole who'll take this as confirmation

• that unclear audience space between art/activism/entertainment where nobody knows what's real

  
  

why TikTok tutorials as my form though???

TikTok tutorials promise you mastery and control because of the editing, so what if I edited a bunch of TT tutorials into one? They're like "here's 3 easy steps to... fix a pothole... or bake a cake... or fix climate change." Using that format to show material impossibility creates this productive friction. The platform expects utility, I'm offering beautiful uselessness.

the affordances are kind of perfect:

• Format expectations (steps, confidence, that specific TikTok editing style) that I can subvert by showing real user behavior instead

• Found footage from actual TikTok guides means the "tutorial" content is real, just recontextualized

• The narrator can stay calm and instructional while everything on screen spirals

• Comment section becomes part of the work (confusion = success)

• Aesthetic beauty (the web balloon installation) can coexist with conceptual failure as a backdrop throughout

• The gap between the "helpful tutorial" voiceover vs. what's actually happening on screen (skipping, scrolling, algorithm descent)
  

what does it even enable??

Permission to fail spectacularly without trying to optimize it. Recognition of the gap between aesthetic intervention and actual material reality. Maybe it makes you question whether any TikTok guide is genuinely helpful or if we're all just performing competence. Also, hopefully some discomfort about performative climate content (yes, including this very project). Experiencing confusion as a feature, not a bug.

collaboration detour (feat Niki BG)

over the weekend my friend Niki Brisnovali Grillakis asked me to collaborate on her spatial intervention project. we ended up sourcing materials from my job at MFTA and combined our projects - weaving through space, creating this base structure that'll hold down the weather balloon on my rooftop. we're mixing fabrics, yarns, strings, paper banners with electrical components. this installation becomes the "art piece" that the climate activist character in my video talks about as "a commentary on the termination of weather balloons."

how do I know if this even works???

• Someone genuinely can't tell if I'm serious

• (if it was posted online) Comments debate whether this is art, activism, or trolling

• It's NOT useful but IS memorable

• People feel slightly uncomfortable but keep watching

• Someone recognizes their own TikTok behavior in the algorithm descent

• It makes someone question the last tutorial they trusted
  

questions I have

1. Does ending on the alien probing TikTok Live feel like too much of a tonal jump or does the whole thing need to build toward that level of absurdity from the start?

2. How much screen time should the legitimate weather balloon guides get before the algorithm takes over? Does spending too long on real content make the descent less believable, or does it need that setup to show what gets buried?
   

thoughts on critique guidelines

The guidelines from the PDF are solid bud I'd add something specifically for satricial/critical work:

"For work that employs satire, irony, or intentional subversion:

• Does the satire land, or does it accidentally become the thing it's critiquing?

• Can you identify where the critique lives? (in the gap between form and content? in the failure? in the aesthetics?)

• Is the tone legible, or is the ambiguity productive?

• Does the "failure" feel intentional or like the maker actually failed?

• What would happen if someone took this completely seriously?"
  

These questions matter because satirical work lives or dies on whether the audience understands the gap between what it pretends to be and what it actually is.