highlike

SASHA FROLOVA

САША ФРОЛОВА
AQUAAEROBIKA
Aquaaerobika is a project synthesizing art-performance and electronic music. Electro-pop, 8bit, disco-house music and futuristic inflatable costumes from latex are mixed in a vivid spectacular pop-art show. Dancers in avant-garde Bauhaus-style costumes with huge inflatable decorations and objects look rather like a live sculptures and turn the whole show in one moving sculpture. Aquaaerobika’s author is Moscow based artist – Sasha Frolova.

Sean Follmer, Mac Schwager & Allison Okamura

An untethered isoperimetric soft robot
The simplest version of this squishy robot is an inflated tube that runs through three small machines that pinch it into a triangle shape. One machine holds the two ends of the tube together; the other two drive along the tube, changing the overall shape of the robot by moving its corners. The researchers call it an “isoperimetric robot” because, although the shape changes dramatically, the total length of the edges – and  the amount of air inside – remains the same.

Wayne Mcgregor

Torus
Directed by British fashion photographer Nick Knight of SHOWStudio, Torus is a film on human connection and loneliness featuring choreography by Wayne McGregor and styling by Norwegian designer Fredik Tjærandsen. Performed by Company Wayne McGregor, Torus shows dancers wearing inflatable balloons designed by Tjærandsen, orbiting in darkness as isolated entities, occasionally lit as they transition through a temporal universe, a mirror to the life that many are only passing through, barely connecting.

Kate Cooper

Infection Drivers
Infection Drivers (2019) explores the body under attack. In this work, a CGI figure struggles to move and breathe in a translucent suit, which takes her body through transmutations of stereotypically masculine and feminine physiques as it inflates and deflates. In a time of increased public surveillance through facial-recognition software and biometric data  mining, Cooper’s high-definition world invites us to investigate and perhaps find freedom in the technologies often used to constrain us.

Penique Productions

Park Lage
In the installation, an 11m x 15m x 25m orange inflatable that completely covered the historic courtyard, the viewer accesses the interior of the work and observes how the previously known space, or not, was reconfigured by a monochromatic plastic cover, through which only the shapes of a reality that has just become a work are drawn. This work makes visible a space that was previously just the place where things live. A work that the wind, the sun, the rain and the passing of people keeps alive, breathing.

Lundén Architecture Company

Another Generosity
Another Generosity explores a new structure that consists of a membrane holding two basic elements: air and water. The simple structures are combined to create a visible and dynamic cellular structure. The inflated elements mediate between the natural and built environment. They respond to external and sometimes unseen stimuli, creating a new kind of experience, a momentary hesitation that heightens our awareness of our surroundings.

Steve Messam

Apollo
Victor Pasmore’s ‘Apollo’ Pavilion sits at the heart of the Sunny Blunts estate in Peterlee[…] Four large orange forms intersect the pavilion at right angles to the main orientation and appear to slice through the pavilion. The blocks are drawn from the geometry of the pavilion and a nod to the remote object planes of Victor Pasmore’s work. The inflatable textiles blocks create a juxtaposition between the angular grey concrete of the pavilion and the soft, rounded, colourful forms of the installation. The intervention is deliberately bold with a strong visual aesthetic to temporarily transform the pavilion. The piece is also, on the surface, playful, tactile and accessible – encouraging the audience to look at the pavilion with fresh eyes.

Nina Katchadourian

Survive the Savage Sea

When I was seven years old, my mother read a book aloud to me titled Survive the Savage Sea (1973). It was the true story of the Robertsons, a family of farmers in England who sold all their possessions to buy a sailboat with the intent of sailing around the world for several years. In June 1972, the Robertsons lost their sailboat in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean when a pod of Orca smashed the hull, leaving the four adults and two children adrift for 38 days. After their inflatable life raft grew too leaky to be safe, they abandoned it for their nine-foot fiberglass dinghy, Ednamair, a vessel so small that with everyone aboard only six inches of the boat remained above the waterline. The family navigated to areas where they could collect rainwater and survived by finding ways to catch sea turtles, dorado, and flying fish until they were spotted and rescued by the crew of a Japanese fishing boat.

video

Schweigman & en Cocky Eek

Spectrum
How intensely can you experience colour? Colour as a phenomenon which you don’t just see, but which totally absorbs… Spectrum is a spatial installation that makes colour tactile and tangible.
Fall backwards into a black hole and reawaken in an infinite spectrum. An immersive experience which will give you a whole new perspective on the coloured cycles of our everyday light. Following Blaas and Curve, Spectrum completes a triptych centred on white space, each piece created with spatial designer Cocky Eek in collabaration with Schweigman&. In Blaas you crawl through an inflatable balloon; in Curve you enter an endlessly spiralling tunnel. Spectrum starts by asking: how can we make the colour physically tangible?

Harrison Pearce

Defence Cascade
In the installation inflated silicone forms are suspended amidst an austere metal structure, and are prodded by automated rods. Set to contrastingly beautiful music by composer Alex Mills, which is punctuated by the industrial sounds of the mechanised device, the art work looks like a science experiment, or some kind of torture device, and you may find yourself anthropomorphising the poor, inflated bags which are at the mercy of their mechanical environment.

NILS VÖLKER

Two Hundred and Seventy
Through the combination of an everyday material with precise technology the mixed media installation fills the whole columned hall from the 19th century with its fluid movement and peculiar sound. Concavely arranged and floating above the spectators heads the form of the artwork seems to pass the skylight like the sun’s rays. Subdivided into nine columns, the nearly 70 square metres large piece of art follows a site-specific choreography determined by a program. Its moving surface is made from 270 white garbage bags, being inflated and deflated. In this way shapes and the boundaries of the installation itself start to dissolve. “Two Hundred and Seventy“ is the first installation with an undisguised view behind the scenes and onto the origin of the wavelike and organic movement: 1080 fans, lots of cables and 45 circuit boards

Mike Pelletier

FILE FESTIVAL
Performance: Capture Part 2

In “Performance Capture: Part 2”, open source motion capture sequences are mapped onto stock low-polygonal unsmoothed 3D characters. Bodies inflate, deflate and oscillate between states, while movements shift and repeat in offset patterns as information transfers from one body to the next. In the animation, what should be used to record, simulate and create perfect virtual realities instead collapses into the uncanny, the abstract and the unreal.

TEUN VONK

FILE SAO PAULO 2017
THE PHYSICAL MIND
“The Physical Mind” is Vonk’s attempt to let participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states by applying physical pressure to the body. The installation consists of two inflatable objects in-between which a participant lays down to subsequently get lifted up and be gently squeezed between the curves of the two objects. While the lifting creates an unstable feeling, this stressful sensation is soon thereafter contrasted with the secure feeling of being gently squeezed between two soft objects. Besides this experience for participants, the installation also evokes feelings of empathy amongst bystanders who witness participants undergo the experience.

IAAC Team

Soft Skin
‘Soft Skin’ is a research project developed by Lubna Alayeli, Nina Jotanovic, Ceren Temel, and Farah Alayeli from the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. The work investigates the possibilities of using air inflation in architecture as an active response to changing environmental parameters. The ‘skin’ is composed of a specially developed composite made of thin layers of flexible silicone and elastic fabric. The material system consists of dozens of inflatable cells combined in larger groups. As parameters change — light and wind in this instance — the cells can inflate or deflate in real time. By acting in real time, it is able to reduce wind vibrations and wind drag, and control light infiltration.

CRAIG GREEN

Moncler’s Genius 2020 Collection
The british fashion designer reinterpreted the brand’s iconic expression as a series of monochrome designs resembling padded samurai armour and brightly colored inflatables[…] Injecting flat sheets with down quilting, Craig Green uses a series of zips that allow the body to inhabit the garments and give them volume. Further defined by outlines printed on the outside, each piece is clad in ripstop nylon, a light-weight nylon fabric with interwoven ripstop reinforcement threads in a crosshatch pattern.

DIANA ENG

INFLATABLE DRESS
Diana Eng, in collaboration with Emily Albinski, created this gorgeous dress way back in 2003, which ended up making its way on the cover of ID Magazine. The designers used this project to explore how they could use electronics to change the shape and color of a gown. The dress inflates to allow you to change it’s shape. Pump up the back or the sides to change its silhouette.
The designers made no attempt to hide the electronics, rather, they exposed the spaghetti-ball of wires and components as the main aesthetic.

tangible media group

transdock
Ken Nakagaki, Yingda (Roger) Liu, Chloe Nelson-Arzuaga, and Hiroshi Ishii
TRANS-DOCK is a docking system for pin-based shape displays that expand their interaction capabilities for both the output and input. By simply interchanging the transducer modules, composed of passive mechanical structures, to be docked on a shape display, users can selectively switch between different configurations including display sizes, resolutions, and even motion modalities such as rotation, bending, and inflation.
In our paper accepted to TEI 2020, we introduce a design space consisting of several mechanical elements and enabled interaction capabilities. Our proof-of-concept prototype explores the development of the docking system based on our previously developed 10 x 5 shape display, inFORCE. A number of transducer examples are shown to demonstrate the range of interactivity and application space achieved with the approach of TRANS-DOCK.

Ana Rewakowicz

Conversation Bubble
At any given moment of time five people are needed to inflate the structure. While the bodies of participants are squeezed and immobilized between two layers of clear vinyl, their heads can move and talk inside the inflated bubble. The duration of the piece depends on the five people’s agreement to end it, as no one can leave on his/her own accord.

HANS HEMMERT

한스 해머
ハンス・ハマート

Hans Hemmert is fascinated by air and latex balloons in a bright canary yellow. But these aren’t just your average latex inflatables, some fill entire rooms while others surround Hemmert himself. Posing as a giant elongated egg, he performs dances or interacts with the objects outside his elastic bubble.

Anna Hepler

The Great Haul
Artist Anna Hepler breaks it all down into the perfect representation of form and leaves the viewer to ponderwhich is exactly what every artist should do. Her 2D work evolves from her 3D sculpture that she constructs using various cast off pieces of plastic that are assembled and inflated. She then uses those structures as the spring board for her drawings, paintings and prints.

Anne Ferrer

Anne Ferrer is a sculptor based in Paris, France who makes inflatable, kinetic objects that are either worn on the body or appear free-standing. Since completing her MFA at Yale University in 1988, Ferrer has worked as a painter who places colors in space, playing with versatile and hybrid forms that are inspired by the human, animal, and floral worlds. Air serves as a solution that resolves space and transport issues making each piece seem as if they literally breathe.

vincent leroy

文森特·勒罗伊
北极光环
Pebble

The ‘pebble’, conceived by vincent leroy, occupies a space with an incredible aesthetic experience. This gigantic elliptical mirror floats with utmost grace, softness and voluptuousness, like this example inside the ‘grand palais’ in paris. The installation forms a sensory experience rather than a visual one. With the mirrored effect, the ground and horizon move slowly until they disappear, making you lose your mark. French artist vincent leroy slows down time and displays his magical mechanism, using the same technology as his boreal halo: inflatable with steel cables in slow rotation.

MAX STREICHER

Max Streicher is a sculptor and installation artist from Alberta, now residing in Toronto. Since 1989 he has worked extensively with inflatable technology in kinetic sculptures and installation works. He has shown widely across Canada in solo exhibitions in museums such as The Art Gallery of Ontario, Edmonton Art Gallery and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon.

G.Mazars

Deflating pavilion
The light, unbound structure of the deflating pavilion, revolving around the theme “dream” was proposed as a temporary pavilion that subtlety drapes over and encompass the Museum Garden in London. The design creates an inflated, altered reality within the existing landscape.

HANS HEMMERT

한스 해머
ハンス・ハマート

Hans Hemmert is fascinated by air and latex balloons in a bright canary yellow. But these aren’t just your average latex inflatables, some fill entire rooms while others surround Hemmert himself. Posing as a giant elongated egg, he performs dances or interacts with the objects outside his elastic bubble.

GERALDO ZAMPRONI

GIANT INFLATED PILLOWS
The monolithic red cushions have been shown as part of various events throughout brazil, peru, argentina and spain – peppering landscapes with the massive artworks as if squeezed within the crevices of each city. The interventions interrogate architecture and landscape – providing a new perspective on a space that depicts tension and uneasiness.

LAURA LYNN JANSEN AND THOMAS VAILLY

Inner Fashion
Inner Fashion questions the codes, rules and production technic of fashion. The human body is seen as a fluid, inflatable and mobile structure in which the tension of fabric remplace muscles. Each piece of cloth are made of 2 layers: an inner layer, XXS, highly strechable and an outer layer, XL and none strechable. Both layer are dressed on a zeppelin shaped balloon representing the human body. As the balloon fills up with air, the fabric of the inner layer stretches out and both fabric are touching each other.

MICHAEL FOX

Bubbles
Bubbles is an adaptable spatial pneumatic installation at an urban scale. The installation consists of large pneumatic volumes that inflate and deflate in reaction to the visitors coming to the site. If unoccupied the volume of the site is slowly filled by the spatially distributed sacks creating a translucent bubble translucent infill. As the occupants enter and move through the installation, they bump the bubbles ranging from 6′ to 8′ in diameter that fill the lower layer of the space. More activity opens up the space more making it navigable. Sensors in the bubbles cause a fan in the manifold to transfer air to the bubble.

ANA REWAKOWICZ

Inflatable suit
コミュニケーションに関する公的および私的な談話の中で、カンバセーションバブルの作品は、「合意」の異なる、時には不条理な考えと、それが個人、家族(グループ)であるかどうかにかかわらず、「同一性」に対する私たちの欲求が違いを受け入れることに不寛容を生み出す可能性があることを指摘しています または社会的に政治的なレベル。 私の作品は、人間性の一部であるこの対立について言及しています。 2006年にニューヨーク州のOMIインターナショナルアーティストレジデンシーで最初に演奏され、2008年にノルウェーで演奏された会話バブルは、5人用のインフレータブル構造を備えています。 いつでも、5人の参加者が同じ空気を吸いながら、膨張可能な泡の共通の空間を共有しています。 彼らの頭は自由に動くので、彼らの体の残りはビニールの2つの層の間に挟まれます。 誰も自分の意志で離れることはできず、公演の期間は、それを終了するための5人の合意に依存します。

Numen/For Use

N-Light Membrane

Built and designed by Numen/For Use, N-Light Membrane is a giant cube with three out of the six surfaces made of flexible membrane (foil mirror) with an air tank and a compressor connected to it. The other three mirrors are semi transparent spy-glass. By inflating or deflating the air tank, the membrane turns convex or concave, deforming the reflections within.

Local Androids

Like living organisms

“Like living organisms” Is an interactive skin-dress that expresses excitement like between two people when they first meet. Our work breathes; it shows a pulse through its veins on the hips and inflates/deflates the shoulder balloons. When approached it responds by increasing its pulse rate through the veins as if it’s excited. It’s now up to the visitor to respond to this excitement. Upon contact the suit will show it’s vulnerable side by deflating the shoulder balloons.

POTLATCH

Gretchen at the Potlatch Feast

“Potlatch is a festive event within a regional exchange system among tribes of the North pacific Coast of North America, including the Salish and Kwakiutl of Washington and British Columbia.”
The potlatch takes the form of governance, economy, social status and continuing spiritual practices. A potlatch, usually involving ceremony, includes celebration of births, rites of passages, weddings, funerals, puberty,and honoring of the deceased. Through political, economic and social exchange, it is a vital part of these Indigenous people’s culture. Although protocol differs among the Indigenous nations, the potlatch could involve a feast, with music, dance, theatricality and spiritual ceremonies. The most sacred ceremonies are usually observed in the winter.
Within it, hierarchical relations within and between clans, villages, and nations, are observed and reinforced through the distribution of wealth, dance performances, and other ceremonies. Status of families are raised by those who do not have the most resources, but distribute the resources. The host demonstrates their wealth and prominence through giving away the resources gathered for the event, which in turn prominent participants reciprocate when they hold their own potlatches.
Before the arrival of the Europeans, gifts included storable food (oolichan [candle fish] oil or dried food), canoes, and slaves among the very wealthy, but otherwise not income-generating assets such as resource rights. The influx of manufactured trade goods such as blankets and sheet copper into the Pacific Northwest caused inflation in the potlatch in the late eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries. Some groups, such as the Kwakwaka’wakw, used the potlatch as an arena in which highly competitive contests of status took place. In rare cases, goods were actually destroyed after being received. The catastrophic mortalities due to introduced diseases laid many inherited ranks vacant or open to remote or dubious claim—providing they could be validated—with a suitable potlatch.
Sponsors of a potlatch give away many useful items such as food, blankets, worked ornamental mediums of exchange called “coppers”, and many other various items. In return, they earned prestige. To give a potlatch enhanced one’s reputation and validated social rank, the rank and requisite potlatch being proportional, both for the host and for the recipients by the gifts exchanged. Prestige increased with the lavishness of the potlatch, the value of the goods given away in it.

VICTORINE MULLER

维克托里娜米勒
ballon stratospherique
To most people, balloons are simply associated with children, décor and celebratory events. Their role is usually meek − look cute and embellish. But to the internationally-acclaimed Swiss performance artist Victorine Müller, they hold a much greater meaning and usefulness. The inflatable aspect of balloons is an essential part of her work. For over fourteen years now, she has been combining the disciplines of painting and sculpture, with sound art and performance.