Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment

Abstract

McCormack’s book seems simply about balloons. The book puts balloons between the concepts of atmosphere and envelopment to make these issues tangible and noticeable. Yet the object balloon is not a device of simply materialising the envelopment of the atmosphere. For the author, atmosphere means ‘elemental spacetimes that are simultaneously affective and meteorological, whose force and variation can be felt, sometimes only barely’, where envelopment addresses both to ‘the condition of being immersed within an atmosphere’ and ‘a process through which atmospheric things emerge’ (4–5). The book consists of nine chapters titled respectively: envelopment, sensing, allure, release, volume, sounding, tensions, hail, and elements. These sub-titles form, for McCormack, the media of ‘elemental conditions of experience via different configurations of bodies, materials, and devices’ (5), which make atmospheres disclosed and palpable.