Walking on air: Art puts pressure on visitors

The installation fills a large post-industrial space with three translucent membranes, divided by pockets of air with different pressures. It begins to assume interesting shapes only when visitors walk across the plastic surfaces.

Although inspired by theoretical physics, On Space Time Foam also looks forward to impending change. The artist imagines that the structure could one day be adapted to form floating islands above the Maldives, a country considered to be at great risk of flooding as sea levels rise. ‘Hopefully, it will make us sense this kind of entangled relationship that we have with planet Earth and between us,’ says Saraceno.

In our Symbiotic Branding macrotrend, we explore how designers are using reliance systems to draw attention to the product of interactions between individuals and larger systems.