UP, UP AND AWAY IN OUR BEAUTIFUL BALLOON
January 6th, 2005 by boomclick
[b]Update
During the severe storms of the weekend of the 8th & 9th of January, the inflatable sphere broke loose from it’s fixings and floated away. So the sphere is no longer at the Big Chill Bar.
If anyone sees a 3 metre wide, white, inflatable sphere floating around London, we’d love a photo…
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If you visited The Big Chill Bar during Christmas 2004, you may have noticed the inflatable sphere. During the day it made Dray Walk look like the opening titles of ‘The Prisioner’, at night it came to life as a projection screen.
Big Chiller Mondo tells us more…
“I cannot remember for how long I have been mooting the idea of projecting onto a large suspended inflatable sphere. It just seemed like one of those crazy ideas one has morphed over years of playing around with weather balloons, veejaying in clubs, designing pneumatic buildings and frequenting creative festivals.
Its not as if it’s an original idea – inflatable technology has been around since your parents plonked you in a ring and threw you in the sea in a vain attempt to teach you to swim.
There is something friendly, knowing and fun about inflatables. Maybe it’s a notion of bouncy castles, childhood party balloons and even mother’s breast perhaps. They always seem to raise a smile (reminds you of ‘the Prisoner’), they seem safe (filled with harmless air) and they bob around gracefully in the gentlest of breezes (nature friendly – hot air balloons). Even our chocolate bars are sold with added bubbles of air nowadays!
Well the technology has moved on from flying helium pigs above Battersea Power Station – its fairly big business for the skilled designers nowadays who can knock up a virtual model on their laptop. Any shapes are realisable from spikey balls to anthropomorphic oddities as long as you can realise and stitch the pattern, as you would an item of clothing for example. And that’s where the real craft of inflatables comes in – someone has to physically make these shapes!
The same goes for the ultra hi-tech end of pneumatic structures. The Eden Project, Cornwall is probably the most awesome example of inflatable technology – the air weighs less than the steel geodesic dome structure – and covers several hundred square metres of land that would be impossible with a material like glass.
And I was getting tired of projecting and veejaying onto rectangular screens anyway!
This was one of the reasons I set up BodyDataSpace as a new design unit that would research, develop and specialise in audio-visual interactive installs integrated with the built environment.
So when I was approached to suspend a four metre wide sphere outside the BC bar, with a view of creating a yuletide chill-out feature to project visuals on, I jumped at the chance.
One has to be pretty careful in planning these type of installations, even though the concept is fairly simple, ie. put ball in air and aim projector – it isn’t as we duly found out!
Both the sphere and projector have to last a potentially bitter and windy winter at high level with little maintenance and little access if anything should go awry. Issues of public safety, permissions from adjacent tenants, rigging, thermodynamics, security, operations etc have to be carefully planned before we could even think about the type of footage that should be shown.
For example, after a quick calculation we realised that the brick wall above the bar could pull down if it got too windy if we didn’t specify the right cables and fixed it to strong parts of the old Truman Brewery, and the projector would need a thermal blanket to keep it snug at night when it went to sleep – poor thing. As it turns out, we have probably pushed the boundaries of what we knew we could do, and it is these types of installations that help future concepts go more smoothly.
So should you arrive at night and see the sphere in all its illuminated glory – raise a smile – you may be one of the select few who will witness the type of excellent visuals we have come to expect at Big Chill, it’s a bit of xmas inflated fun that we hope we can continue into the festivities this year.”
Mondo
Inflatable sphere credits
Concept: Katrina & Mondo
Design & project management: BodyDataSpace
Installation: Vector Special Projects
Inflatable Sphere: Inflatable Systems
Audio visual: Adam Seaman
Thanks to Truman Brewery, DDA, Ben, Lisa and Sandra for their patience.
