How would one represent breath? To us, balloons seem to be the perfect medium for mimicking breathing. Each balloons are programmed to randomly inflate or deflate, while audiences may observe and experience tension, fear, curiosity, chaos, and suffocation. In some cases, balloons exploded and we left the debris in the box both as a record of the past and a hint for the future.

The heart of “breath” is an Arduino nano that controls 7 pairs of transistors that toggle pumps and valves. A GPIO expander is included due to the limited IOs available. We wrote a class/library to use in Arduino IDE that allows us to control each balloon in minimum lines of code.

All hardware is fixed to a 3D-printed back panel, which is fastened together with 2 layers of acrylic sheets on each side with nylon screws and bolts. 

One white balloon (the biggest balloon) is presented as the center of the installation. Blue balloons surround the white balloon, all inflating at different speeds and duration. The randomness can result in the white balloon being compressed, displaced, or exploded.