Breathing Room

Breathing Room is an interactive installation that shapes it contours and depths through the actions of the user. Invited to pull threads of fishing weights, the user can change and move the spaces it envelops. Breathing Room responds by a slight inhalation, increase of pulse. The membrane breathes; opens itself and closes according to its own internal rhythms. These gentle oscillation are counteracted, shaped and changed through the users adjustments.

Breathing Room is a responsive textile architecture. Imagined as part of a scenography, the space is seen as a three dimensional backdrop. In this backdrop pockets of space occur. These spaces can been enacted and inhabited by the dancers. As a resting place Breathing Room creates a moment of pause, a secret site both within and without the audiences gaze.

Breathing Room learns from new advancements in technical textiles and robotics. As a sewn structure Breathing Room imagines the making of a textile robot at architectural scale.

Breathing Room also opens up for an investigation into the detailing of a Robotic Membrane. Using a merge of 3D modelling and 2D traditional pattern making the patterns for the skin are developed in Rhino and then laser cut. This furthers on our experiences of large scale pattern making in the Vivisection projects. Breathing Room is actuated through a series of parallel weighted systems that allow the user to interact with the membrane directly affecting the system through its material. As the user pulls a series of weights these affect and change the equilibrium of the room making it hyperventilate till it finds its temporal space again.

Venue
Breathing Room exhibited at Robots at Play at Brandts Klædefabrik, Odense, August 2007.