Form of Expression: Installation Artwork
Main Materials: Balloons, Speakers
Conceptual Direction: Social Issues
Focus of the Installation: Sound, Visuals, Conceptuality
It’s difficult to articulate exactly how I came up with the idea of using balloons to house sound. While researching various sound installations on YouTube for inspiration, I realized that the kind of installation I wanted to create was simple, orderly, and industrial. I have always aimed to create installations that allow the audience to intuitively understand my expression, incorporating a sense of technology and interactivity without alienating viewers with overly complex technicalities.
As my graduation project, I hope this work challenges me to push my limits. I aim to integrate the skills I’ve previously learned while also developing new ones. I am determined to give it my all. The reason I chose installation art for both of my projects is that in the first two years of my studies and work, my main focus was on sound design and scoring. Before entering university, I was also studying music production. Installation art, therefore, represents a new field for me.
Last semester’s exhibition at Gallery46 revealed the allure of installation art to me. However, due to time constraints, that work was far from perfect and made me acutely aware of my lack of knowledge in this field. Installation creation spans a wide range of skills, requiring familiarity with circuits, motors, soldering, cutting, modeling, and assembly. In the last exhibition, I received a lot of help from friends in the interactive design program regarding circuit connections and motor selection. Collaboration is an excellent way to improve, but for this graduation project, I hope to independently complete all aspects of the design and production myself. I am fully prepared for trial and error.
Initially, my idea was to wrap a speaker in a malleable material, allowing the audience to interact with it (e.g., by applying pressure to deform it) and thereby alter the sound.
Inspiration Source: Sound Forest
Organization: Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University
Authors: Minori NAGASHIMA, Hideyuki NAKAZATO, Sho KAMURO, Kouta MINAMIZAWA, Susumu TACHI
Description: Sound Forest is an art installation that allows us to communicate with space. It is constructed of tactual sound devices, a spatial sound constructing space, and interaction using both of these. We call the tactual sound devices “Sound Beads.” Viewers are able to feel sound through their acoustic and haptic senses and communicate with the space.
The wire mesh suspending the sound beads reminded me of expanding foam. For some reason, I started wondering what would happen if I placed a speaker inside expanding foam. However, after a while, this idea gradually evolved into: what would happen if I placed a speaker in a material where it wouldn’t normally be found? If that material could provide a space that could change around the speaker, that would be ideal. That’s when I thought of balloons.
Balloons have many advantages due to their unique characteristics: they are cheap, soft, highly elastic, easy to control internally, and readily available. They come in a variety of sizes, large enough to accommodate a speaker. Additionally, there is an interesting experimental case in Arduino programming: breathing simulation.
At the same time, I was reminded of an installation that was featured in the 2021 London Design Biennale：LEBENSRAUM (LIVING SPACE)
This made me realize that balloons can accurately and intuitively represent breathing, emotions, and pressure, making them a versatile and fascinating material for installations. As a result, I decided to use balloons as the primary material for my project.
To make the installation more impactful, I decided to suspend multiple balloons in the exhibition space. Installing microphones inside the balloons was my initial idea.