Lea Emerlyn – Improvisational Inflatable

I started off by cutting random shapes off the bag. Attaching the different shapes together was easy until I needed to merge edges to form angles in order to turn them into a 3D shape. I tried going slowly and cutting off small pieces of tape. After getting the general attachment strategy down, I used a longer tape to attach the entire edge together.

Another difficulty I ran into was closing off the shape. After the hole of the inflatable gets smaller as I attach more pieces, I needed to start thinking about what piece to cut off next in order to fit it into the remaining space.

I started exploring how to take advantage of the different transparencies of plastic. When I was using the clear bag, I thought that it would be interesting to put scraps inside the inflatable so that viewers can see what is inside. As I was doing that I also had an idea of inflating my next object with scrap fabric/yarn instead of air.

For the inflatable that had tape on the inside, I found it really challenging to tape on the inside. I think I would have been better off trying to tape on the outside, then turning the entire thing inside out. The most challenging part is closing off the inflatable because I could not think of a way to not have tape showing for the final edge.

Inflatable 1

Inflatable 2

Inflatable 3