Overhead modernity: airplanes, skywriting, and heterotopia in the sky

Public space is an inscribed space. The density, modalities, and locations of the inscriptions vary. The only area that has remained relatively unaffected visually is the sky. For most of the nineteenth century, seeing human-made artifacts high overhead were rare. Things began changing around 1900, leading to the formation of what I call “overhead modernity.” By this term I mean the fragmentary assemblages of human-made traces marking the sky that develop visual relationships with celestial bodies, and invisible but existing relationships with invisible human-caused processes. All this produces a heterogeneous realm of inscriptions in constant transition. Overhead modernity could be characterized as a heterotopia somewhat like Michel Foucault used the term about constructed environments on the ground level. I will concentrate in this article only on one of its manifestations in the sky: the uses of airplanes as ‘aerial pencils’ drawing traces and writing messages high above. I am only concerned here with things that are seen high above by observers who are down below. The article is a contribution to the media archaeology of public open spaces.