American artist Doug Aitken has created a mirrored hot air balloon to travel across rural landscapes of Massachusetts this summer.
Called New Horizon, Aitken's design comprises a 100-foot-tall (30-metre-tall) balloon made of a semi-mirrored material and a gondola. It will fly over various sites in Massachusetts that are managed by the Trustees, a local non-profit preservation and conservation organisation, for the rest of the month.

Curator Pedro Alonzo enlisted the Californian artist to create the project for The Trustees' Art and the Landscape Programme, which invites artists to create a work in response to the natural surrounds. Aitken came up with the idea for a flying sculpture to be less predictable.
"I thought that I don't really want to make a fpiece of public art that sits in a field," Aitken told Dezeen. "I'd love to find something that's, you know, more alive and more challenging and more kind of time-based." "I started thinking about the idea of making an artwork that could travel and be nomadic and could change continuously," he added.

Aitken worked with friends at NASA to develop the semi-mirrored material for the balloon's body, which is intended to reflect the landscape when flying during the day.
LED lights are hand-sewn throughout the material and can be choreographed to illuminate in different patterns and colours during the night time.

"I didn't want the piece to finish when the sun sets and we go into darkness,&quo...