Premiering at the eARTS Beyond – Shanghai International Exhibition of Media Art 2009, Inflatable Architectural Growth is the first major robotic outdoor sculpture of American artist Chico MacMurtrie / Amorphic Robot Works using Inflatable Bodies technology. The work consists of large arches, each five meters tall, growing out of organic hemispheric forms, which are set upon the plaza of the Oriental TV Tower in Shanghai.

Viewers experience this sculpture in different stages, starting with a fully retracted form where only the bases are visible. As the performance of the sculpture is triggered, the arches begin to inflate and grow out of their bases until they take their final form: a complex geometrical architecture. In their choreography, the inflatable bodies generate a wide range of percussive sounds, a profound and powerful respiration performed by the inner mechanism. Situated in the heart of this inflatable arena, the viewers become part of this unique and overwhelming visual and acoustic experience.

The underlying idea of transforming an identifiable object into an abstract geometrical structure, paralleled by a process of organic growing, has been materialized before in Chico MacMurtrie’s work Totemobile, a robotic sculpture that appears as a life-sized representation of the iconic Citroën DS and transforms into an abstract organic 18-meter-tall totem pole.

Inflatable Architectural Growth attempts to further develop the Inflatable Bodies technology while creating a new dialogue between man, machine and architecture.

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