Awesome Installations

Maker Ali Spagnola teamed up with the L.A. Department of Public Health to help promote sexual health. Her project? Inflate thousands of condoms for an art exhibit inspired by Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds. It took three days to blow them all up. After filling some by mouth (and trombone), Ali and her pals sped things up with compressed air.

At first glance, we thought these were costumed dancers, but these straw men are machines. Artist U-ram Choe’s Round Table is a kinetic sculpture featuring 18 headless characters supporting table on their backs. Its mechanisms are programmed to keep a rubber band “head” from rolling off the table. The piece was displayed at the MMCA Seoul in 2022.

Modern cars are made from thousands of parts, precisely engineered to fit together and carry us safely down the road. Commissioned by Nissan China in 2012, Dutch artist Paul Veroude took a car’s 3,421 individual parts and suspended them from the ceiling relative to the locations where they are normally assembled.

Yunchul Kim created this kinetic sculpture which looks like some sort of segmented alien robot. The work represents the infinite nature of creation and extinction, with each of its parts made from acrylic, flexible LED panels, and motors. It’s on display at the 59th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy through 11.27.22.

Shimmering at the base of Australia’s sacred Uluru, Field of Light – Tili Wiru Tjuta Nyakutjaku in local Pitjantjatjara – is an epic art installation of 50,000 solar-powered lights that glow from dusk ‘til dawn. Artist Bruce Munro’s traveling spectacle covers an area the size of four football fields until it’s lights-out 1.1.21.

Artist Yamamoto Motoi creates intricate landscapes using salt as his only medium. Among his creations is this labyrinthine design he created for an exhibition celebrating “Mono-no Aware” an ancient Japanese term acknowledging the ephemeral nature of things. The work took Motoi 10 days and 330 lb. of salt to make.

Artist Yang Yongliang created this impressive short film that combines the light seen in cities with the stars in the sky. The full piece was designed for the MGM Cotai Theater’s massive 12 x 70-meter wraparound screen, so for maximum enjoyment, you’ll want to watch this video in full screen in a darkened room.

South Korea-based creative studio d’strict created this cool public art display that uses a series of wrap-around screens to make it look like ocean waves contained in a giant box. Of course it helped that they had a massive set of ultra high-def LED displays built by Samsung at Seoul’s equivalent of Times Square.

Artist Parker Heyl created this ingeniously simple but visually stunning installation work. Inspired by Jacob’s Ladder toys, it mechanically flips dozens of them with wood on one side and mirrors on the other to reflect colorful, ever-changing imagery. More here.

As a statement on climate change, conceptual artist Leandro Erlich created a surreal scene right in the middle of Miami Beach. The installation, titled “Order of Importance,” featured 66 actual vehicles buried under sand to create a traffic jam.

Brooklyn art studio BREAKFAST’s interactive artwork uses arctic temperature data to visualize climate change in real time, displaying above average temperatures in gold, and below average in blue. It also changes appearance when you approach to represent the impact climate change has on all of us.

This fascinating clip by video artist Yuge Zhou and sound designer Stephen Farrell was created from hundreds of video clips shot in NYC’s subway stations, then assembled together into concentric squares. It was designed for a top-down projection mapping installation, but it’s just as intriguing flattened.

Mashable introduces us to Tomislav Topic and Thomas Granseuer of Quintessenz. The duo creates colorful and dynamic art installations by spray-painting flexible mesh material, then layering them into gradations of color. When set against real-world backdrops, they look almost like digital imagery.

Artists FilthyLuker and Pedro Estrellas of Designs In Air bring old buildings to life by filling them with monsters. Their latest installation features an inflatable sea creature with 20 tentacles sticking out of Building 611 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. See it in person through 11/16/18.

Near the burgeoning Fremont East District in Las Vegas sits The Listening Tree from George Zisiadis. It invites the public to discover the joy of music through tree-suspended headphones, each playing a continuous unique song.

Put on your headphones, turn down your lights and go full screen to experience a tangle of geometric filaments fluttering to life at the speed of light in this installation by Mimi Son and Elliot Woods. Where’s an oculus rift when you need it?

The latest iteration of Forever Bicycles by artist and activist Ai Weiwei was made using 3000 bikes stacked side by side. The trippy installation was part of Toronto’s La Nuit Blanche art festival and will stay up until Oct. 27th.