steve roden
airforms 2004
exhibition: scottsdale museum of contemporary art,
scottsdale, arizona, april - september 2004

airforms was created for the exhibition phx/la at the scottsdale museum of contemporary art in scottsdale arizona. airforms was created in response to the experimental houses designed by wallace neff in the 1940's through a process he called 'airform construction'. the houses were built by spraying concrete over an inflated balloon structure to create an organic shaped dwelling that was inspired by neff's interest in the design of the nautillus sea shell. the goodyear company that built the balloons for the houses was based in a suburb of phoenix called lichtfield park, where a few of the houses were built.

among the many interests that inspired neff's balloon structures, was an interest in the aesthetic and psychological results of structures formed by air. airforms takes off from neff's ideas in both the physical and audio construction - both using air as a kind of invisible skeleton. the 5 objects were sculpted out of plaster set over simple children's balloons. the sound piece was created using the transformed sound of one breath blowing through an old wooden organ pipe. the colors on the sculptures connect the work from my own home back to arizona, in that the colored lines are based on the vowel structures of 5 succulents that were listed as native to arizona in a 1930's guide to the huntington libary of pasadena. each of the 5 hollow plaster forms has a speaker inside of it running a 4 channel audio work. the work was later shown at raid projects los angeles.

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