"From a distance, it looks like Melbourne sprouted a mountain range overnight. Up close, the rocks aren't rocks at all - they're air. With the Australian debut of Iwagumi Air Scape, art and technology studio ENESS turned Prahran Square into a larger-than-life rock garden you can squeeze through, touch, and hear come alive with sound. Although Melbourne-based, ENESS founder and artist Nimrod Weis drew inspiration from Japanese culture in creating Iwagumi Air Scape."
"The installation is made up of 16 inflatable rocks - some stretching up to over 30 feet long - arranged to form crevices and passages that mimic a canyon. As visitors move through the work, they trigger a layered soundscape of birds, frogs, crickets, monkeys, bats, and mountain streams. Each inflatable appears strikingly real thanks to surface patterns derived from photographs of granite. Only when touched does the illusion break, revealing that what looks like thousands of tons of stone is, in fact, weightless."
ENESS installed Iwagumi Air Scape in Prahran Square as a monumental inflatable rock garden that visitors can enter, touch, and traverse. The work consists of 16 inflatable rocks, some over 30 feet long, arranged to form crevices and canyon-like passages. Surface patterns derived from granite photographs create a convincing illusion of stone that reveals its weightlessness when touched. Motion triggers a layered soundscape of birds, frogs, crickets, monkeys, bats, and mountain streams that animates the environment. The installation draws on Japanese reverence for natural composition and rock gardens, and it glows red at night, altering its planetary atmosphere.
Read at Design Milk
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