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 Monitoring the historical ups and downs of inflatable architecture. The Metropolis Observed October 2001
This is Inflat-o-scape, Los Angeles Web artist Jessica Irish's online examination of inflatability (www.inflatoscape.com). For Irish, the concept encompasses more than balloons: she sees inflatability as a physical representation of our hubris, our delusions of grandeur, and our utopian projections of the future that turn out to be filled with hot air. "Inflatability corresponds to all those moments in history [that attempted] real social change," she insists. In fact the idea for Inflat-o-scape was born in the late 1990s during our most recent moment of blowup and deflation: the dot-com bubble. "There was this incredible boosterism, with people saying that the Internet was going to change the world, change the way people work and live, that it would be this economy completely without architecture. So how do you make architecture out of boosterism?" The Web site--phase one of a two-part project funded by a $5,000 seed grant from Creative Capital--doesn't try to answer that question. Instead Inflat-o-scape works like an online museum exhibiting interpretations of inflatability, with Irish acting more as curator than artist. Some pages contrast the sprawling modern landscape of the Web with the creator's sprawling adopted city, Los Angeles, whose growth was fed by opportunistic boosters and their promises of a land of eternal sunshine. Giant inflatable penguins and dinosaurs--advertising gimmicks grown almost to the size of their owners' desire for dollars--are shown next to inflatable warehouses designed for the New Economy. ("Should you ever need to close shop, just deflate your warehouse and relocate.") In an online landscape that is "part fiction, part history, part failure, and part theoretical database," Irish adds a final resting place for famously overblown dot-coms. Pets.com, Garden.com, Furniture.com, eToys.com, Bbq.com--the five basics of bourgeois living--all have tombstones in this e-graveyard. Buckminster Fuller's utopian idea of inflatable units that could effortlessly fulfill housing needs is also a launching point for the artist. Irish presents a "future dome" of other unbuilt architectures, along with outlandish ideas for city transport, such as a glowing system of pneumatic tubes. "But it's never the visionary utopia that was promised," Irish laments. Or maybe it's not a lament: "Instead of [inflatable houses] you end up with something like a McDonald's Playland. But why can't a Playland be architecture?" A repository of hope and failed hope, Irish's Web piece neatly exposes the joints and trusses of our desires--for a better place to live, an easier place to make a million--and still manages to make the suburban into the sublime. Now that Inflat-o-scape I is up and receiving hits worldwide, Irish is ready to move on to phase two: a multiuser game. "Because the exhibit is so conceptual, I wanted something more interactive for the next part," she says, "something that people could participate in." Instead of slaying dragons or accumulating gold, each player becomes a balloonlike avatar struggling in a marketplace of ideas. This is an academic's version of Ultima, in which players are in the business of selling their opinions rather than food and weapons. "I picture it as opinions about architecture, but really I'm just building this space," Irish says. "If people want to use it for other things, that would be great too." If your fellow players agree with your ideas, whatever they're about, then your avatar inflates--but jabs from others can also deflate ridiculous propositions. Like-minded players can merge, giving them more space to spread their thoughts. "You can even become like Scientology and co-opt other little ones and get them to subscribe to you," Irish deadpans. Makes the giant sausage look pretty reasonable, after all. |
