The first multi-sculpture installation using ARW's new Inflatable Bodies technology, 16 Birds, is a performative installation that contemplates the life cycle through a study of movement, image, scale, and sound. It consists of 16 large, white fabric shapes that recall the simplest line drawing of a bird, hanging limp and lifeless from the ceiling at eye level. As viewers enter the room, the tapered, joined cone-shapes gradually inflate with air, lengthen and take form, eventually reaching out with a graceful wingspan, robust with life.

The pattern of the birds for the first installation was influenced by a flight into Adelaide, Australia. The River Murray is beautiful in its curving shape, but a river that is now dying because of the overdevelopment surrounding it. The Birds in the Adelaide installation flew in a line that traces the shape drawn by the River Murray upon the earth. The vantage point places the viewer at eye level with the installation, moving through the installation allows you find various compositions reminiscent of the formations of nature.

They then begin their stationary journey: a slow, elegant flapping motion, all 16 in a randomly generated sequence, with the mechanism that moves them creating a constant rhythmic breathing sound. After a brief flight, the birds reach the end of their life, and begin a deflating collapse that starts at the tips of the wings and moves inward to the center of the body.

Just as we watch them come to life, waiting as they slowly inflate, so too do we see them die. Many complex activities combine to create these simple motions, and unlike many robotic works, which end with the sudden withdrawal of electricity, in the Birds, death is as carefully choreographed as the flapping of the wings.

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