Airship Orchestra

ENESS
2020

Environmental installation

The Airship Orchestra is a mystical tribe of otherworldly characters beamed from the night stars, skin streaked with galaxy and voices like stardust. The sound experience is its own spatial environment, immersing visitors in an arresting score written character-by-character for a 20-person choir. The generative soundscape synced with light, creates a mesmeric adventure that is aesthetically dynamic both day and night. Visitors are beckoned inside the formation to bathe in volumetric sound and rhythmic light pulsation.
The resulting music is minimal and reflective, enabling visitors to conjure their own interpretation about from where the Orchestra has materialized. As with all ENESS work, there are intriguing details to discover such as friendly LED eyes that blink and follow visitors from creature to creature. These artful moments are underscored by a rousing, rising rhythm that transports participants to another world.

Biography

Founded in 1997, ENESS is a multidisciplinary team of creatives including artists, musicians, software engineers, industrial designers, thinkers and a writer. ENESS pioneered the art of 3D projection mapping and interactive real-time motion tracking, breaking new ground and creating firsts that have since become accepted design solutions. The studio has been commissioned to produce and install artworks worldwide for signature commercial buildings; urban and cultural precincts; festivals, galleries and museums of modern art.
ENESS studio creates both permanent and temporary public artworks: inspirational installations that forge greater community connection in the public realm. Temporary public artworks such as Cupid’s Koi Garden offer the opportunity to dynamically change public space through fresh architectural interventions by transforming existing spaces from mainstream and expected to become synonymous with what’s new and ground-breaking. By delivering astounding aesthetic experiences in unexpected ways, ENESS instantly and forever changes visitor perceptions about the place.
Temporary artworks are deployed and installed in response to social issues such as the pandemic – a simple, joyful way of re-enlivening space to inspire community. ENESS artworks are also geared towards cross-generational connection through clever combinations of whimsical imagery and humanized technology that is programmed to inspire interaction. Cupid is the latest and most technically complex in a series of beautiful, temporary artworks that offer surprising combinations of technology and soft materiality – outcomes that are alive to the moment and although gone tomorrow, stay in the hearts and minds of our audiences.
With Cupid’s Koi Garden, artist and founder Nimrod Weis was able to translate the idea of formal civic fountains into an interactive, temporary experience that distilled the very essence of Melbourne in January – providing a cool oasis in the midst of a scorching local summer – a place of water-play, flourish and respite that lifted spirits flattened by the previous year of endless lockdowns; ushering in the new year with motifs of renewal, change and innovation.

A production
Technical Partner