Here's How The Sea Can Move A Row Of Balloons 60 Miles Away

Water and balloons usually come together in the form of handy projectiles for childhood water fights, but artist Nils Völker has brought them together in a far more unusual way. For a new work called Thirty Three, he's built an installation in an 11th century church in Caen, France for the Festival Normandie Impressionniste, which takes water as its theme this year.

The piece follows on from Völker's previous experiments and features a row of 33 balloons (or cushions) that inflate and deflate in a rhythmic motion, swaying gently like waves in the sea. That's because their motion is determined by the tides 60 miles away at the harbor in Le Havre in the northwest of France. Le Havre has artistic significance because it was the subject of Monet's painting Impression, soleil levant, which gave the Impressionist movement its name.

The installation follows the ebb and flow of the water, slowing down when it reaches its highest or lowest point. "Approximately every six hours, when the time of the lowest/highest point is reached the all over intensity slowly decreases until the movement is stopped." Völker says. "Then the cushions restart to oscillate slowly to the opposite direction with slowly increasing intensity. During the month the intensity of the tides changes and also the intensity and speed of the wave-like movement is different from day to day."

The cushions, which are created from the shiny blankets marathon runners get at the end of a race, are filled using 12 computer cooling fans and run by an Arduino which is fitted with a real time clock. "The program regularly checks the current time and looks up a large set of data containing the precise times and heights of the tides in Le Havre." Völker explained.

Völker's initial interest in experimenting with these custom-made balloons started out because he managed to get hold of very cheap computer cooling fans. From that he made an installation out of garbage bags. "Initially I wanted to use it as a screen but I was surprised how wonderful and organic a consecutive inflation of the bags looked like and also the sizzling sound they make." he notes. "If you break it down a bit it's actually very simple: just switched current going to a set of fans which inflate/deflate a cushion. But if you have many of them and if the programming is done right it looks, sounds, and feels incredible."

This then set him on his current path, where he's been exploring different variations and setups and experimenting with shapes and materials. "It's incredible how many variations are possible and how differently they can be adapted to different spaces." he says.

The exhibition runs until 1st September 2013 and is open from Wednesday until Sunday, 15:00 till 19:00. 

Images courtesy of Nils Völker

@stewart23rd