The final project was an opportunity to truly explore an interest of mine. I chose to look at the form and qualities of air dancers, the inflatable tubes found typically outside car stores. Initially, I thought the form was simple: air entered a tube and the weight of the top made it fall over and reassert itself once pressure rebuilt. However, I came to learn how complicated this form was, and all the factors involved in replicating the motion. After much trial and error, I decided to downscale the project to make fabrication and testing much easier. Once I did this, there was already a different quality to the inflatables. At the size, the tubes were much more sporadic, flailing, and agitated which lends to a very different experience than the large ones. I then explored several ways to modify the original shape. I tried making a round base, splitting the top, and splitting the bottom. Each one had very different behaviors reflected by the air flows. Overall, I learned a lot of about the material, air, and the relationship between that material and air.

This project, as I quickly learned, is very dynamic in nature. What I found is that a surface texture can be as complicated — or uncomplicated — as you choose. Clearly, the more pieces used to pattern the object, the more realistic it is. I might have taken on a job possibly more than I thought I could do at first but after working out the complexities, I realized that it’s quite possible with time. I approached this water bottle shape in a very modular fashion, as the symmetry of the object I aimed to keep in the final sewn project. However, despite this, I still ran into difficulties creating dips in the surface because I did not know how to achieve this. Nevertheless, I’m pretty satisfied with the outcome of this project, for the level of knowledge I walked in with.