Jiyeon Chun – Improvisation Inflatables

For my first inflatable, I was aiming mostly just to get a sense of the material, what works, what doesn’t, what techniques are best, etc. I started out by choosing a few colors, cutting out some shapes, and taping sides/pieces that fit together. I learned quickly that curves are significantly harder to put together than straight edges, they require the “stitching” method and multiple pieces of tape. This one took quite a while, as I was really figuring it out as I went, and the inflatable ended up being just a bit bigger than the size of my head. For the second the third inflatables, I began to play more with scale, and color. I switched to clear tape I had lying around, as I had begun to run out of the pink cloth tape provided. Also, for the second inflatable, I flipped it inside out so that most of the tape was on the inside, creating a more seamless look– almost like a quilt, whereas the first one exhibited more prominent edges and borders. I learned that how you close up the pieces together especially impacts the shape of the inflatable, for example, taping a long piece into a sort of cone shape makes for a pointy cone extrusion out of the inflatable.