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. “Through this artwork we are celebrating how Japanese people acknowledge and recognize nature as the ultimate designer in terms of composition,” Weis explains. “Culturally, the Japanese admire and respect natural forms such as rock formations, observing these compositions in great detail, which they then translate into various artforms. This is evidenced by rock gardens in spiritual places, in civic spaces, in small domestic gardens and aquariums through aquascaping.” Weis takes this concept and inflates it – literally – to monumental size.
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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. “There is a huge element of surprise in this work, when visitors touch the artworks and realize that in fact, they are inflatable,” Weis says. At night, Iwagumi Air Scape transforms again, glowing in vibrant red tones as if the Weis was hosting the installation on another planet.
While the work is designed to reconnect us with nature, its very existence is rooted in technology, raising questions about how wilderness – and our relationship to it – can exist in an increasingly digital world. “Our creative practice interrogates the relationship between the virtual and physical worlds. In this case, we created digital rocks that are printed and illuminated but exist in space as convincing natural forms. The fact that these artificial objects can help in reconnecting people with nature says a lot about our world at this time,” says Weis. The installation reflects this duality, as sounds from the surrounding streets seep into the immersive soundscape, blurring the line between the constructed canyon and the real city beyond.
Although Iwagumi Air Scape has wrapped its Melbourne run, the installation is set to continue its global tour. Next stop: Spain. Keep an eye on ENESS to see if their monumental, weightless rocks land in your city next.
To learn more about the Iwagumi Air Scape installation by ENESS, visit eness.com.
Photos by Ben Weinstein.
