Artist Upcycles Garbage Bags into a Kinetic Sculpture

Repurposed trash sacks create a rhythmic, undulating sculpture in Nils Völker's 'Sixty Eight.'

July 8, 2015, 1:00pm

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Garbage bags aren't just for trash, you know? In new exhibiton, Sixty Eight, artist Nils Völker employs them in a site-specific kinetic installation at the Motion Science exhibition at Tokyo's 21_21 Design Sight facility.

Völker often employs custom electronics and programming to breathe uncanny lives into lifeless, humdrum forms, like plastic bags or helium balloons. In Sixty Eight, the bags rise and fall at different intervals, looking like an unnatural, writhing landscape that grows and shrinks almost reassuringly. "The garbage bags are selectively inflated and deflated in controlled rhythms, creating wavelike animations across the floor," writes Völker on his website. "Although each bag is mounted in a stationary position, the sequences of inflation and deflation create the impression of lively movements. Geometrical forms appear from the matrix and disappear back into the surface."

Look long enough and it's a bit like the pareidolia of seeing faces and different forms in clouds, but this time, well, the clouds are made of plastic and they're on the floor of a museum.