Theo Botschuijver
Playful inventions
Special thanks to Hannie van den Dop, for her research, text-contributions, corrections and long-time assistance and advice.
Contents
Pioneering with light and air / Pionieren met licht en lucht Bob Witman – 6
Perfogram – 134 Computer graphics – 136 Beeldspraak – 139
Works 1965 - 2019 Outdoor lighting – 22 Eventstructure Research Group – 24 Tubing – 26 Supertube – 28 Corpocinema – 30 Moviemovie – 34 Airground – 38 Cushion – 42 Pneutube – 44 Brickhill – 48 Red Chinaman Dragon – 50 Alp event – 54 Waterwalk – 56 Waterwalk Diamonds Are Forever – 64 Waterwalk Tube – 66 Octopus – 72 Cloud – Daylight sky by night – 73 Auditorium – 74 Space Auditorium – 77 Video Studio – 78 Information Pavilion – 79 Homage to Bladen – 80 Airground – 82 Airground Floriade – 84 Rainbow – 88 Centipede – 90 Dinosaurs – 91 Vacu-room – 92 Blow-up room – 93 Diadrama – 94 Genesis: The Lamb – 98 Viewpoint – 102 Sesamstraat – 104 Pink Floyd: Pigs on the Wing – 106 Lasershow Genesis – 112 Mirror Roof Genesis – 117 Teardrop – 120 Laser performance – 122 Cello case – 123 Weather vane – 124 Ballboard – 125 Anamorphosis – 126 Worldbomb – 128 City lighting – 130 Liquid display – 131 Virtual airplane – 132
A torrent of airy ideas Gert Staal – 140 Talking Head – 141 Drumkit – 142 Pigeon – 143 Roof design – 144 UFO – 145 Watersheet – 146 Sensation Shiva – 147 Lion – 148 Gimble – 149 Talking Head II – 150 Heart – 152 Star – 153 Lips – 153 Extravagant Visionary Peter Tomaž Dobrila – 155 The ‘O’ from Overijssel – 156 Expomobile – 158 Airwing, the art of flying – 160 List of works – 164 Biography – 166 Bibliography – 166 Photography – 167 Acknowledgements – 167 Colophon – 168
Pionieren met licht en lucht Bob Witman
In 1965 fietst de 22-jarige Theo Botschuijver op een avond naar huis vanaf de academie in Eindhoven waar hij wordt opgeleid tot industrieel ontwerper. Hij passeert een woning waar na afloop van een tuinfeestje de buitenverlichting nog brandt. Een laag mist die tien meter boven de grond hangt, reflecteert zo veel van het schijnsel dat de bomen, objecten en schutting oplichten. Het zal de inspiratie vormen voor zijn eindexamenproject: een serie opblaasbare witte plastic wolken die worden gecoat met een dunne laag reflecterende glasparels waarop licht wordt geprojecteerd. Het effect is als dat van die laaghangende mistflard die avond in Eindhoven. Dit vernuftige en poëtische academieproject legt veel bloot van de drijfveren die de komende decennia de kracht zullen vormen voor het rijke œuvre van Botschuijver (1943): licht, lucht, techniek, speelsheid en grenzen opzoeken. Een œuvre dat misschien bekender is dan de maker. Het reusachtige opblaasvarken op de hoes van Pink Floyds Animals, een lopen-over-water-scene uit James Bonds Diamonds are Forever, de luchtgevulde paviljoens op de tentoonstelling Sonsbeek buiten de perken in 1971, de eerste lasershow van Genesis in 1976, vroege computeranimaties, een Shiva beeld op een bed van wapperende lotusbloemen op Sensation White in 2000: het is allemaal het werk van een man die is gefascineerd door vernieuwende technologie en hoe die techniek betekenis krijgt voor ons alledaagse leven.
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Het werk bestaat uit objecten, beelden en installaties die zich meer thuis voelen op straat dan in een museum. Die bijna altijd aanraakbaar zijn, letterlijk om op te springen of in te klimmen, die de toeschouwer altijd deelgenoot maken – en soms zelfs eigenaar – van het werk. Kinderen gebruiken zijn opblaaskunst als springkussen, voorbijgangers rollen een groot kussen door de stadstraten, buurtgenoten leggen in een video-installatie politieke leiders vervreemdende teksten in de mond en bezoekers loungen lui op de opblaasvloer van een tijdelijk paviljoen. Voor Theo Botschuijver begonnen de jaren zestig in een grote voormalige boerderij even buiten Eindhoven, waar hij woonde met andere academie studenten. Ter gelegenheid van hun afstuderen veranderde de boerderij in een spectaculair ‘gesamtkunstwerk’, waaraan alle bewoners een bijdrage leverden. Hier maakte Botschuijver zijn eerste ‘tubing event’: lange slappe buizen van plastic, waar hij lucht in blies, waardoor ze alle kanten op gingen in onvoorspelbare patronen, Instant sculpture noemde hij dat. Dit tubing event was samen met het eind examenwerk het begin van een gelaagde reeks toepassingen van ‘inflatables’, waar Botschuijver al snel de potentie van zou ontdekken. “Het principe van luchtkunst is eenvoudig”, zegt hij. “Plastic kun je lijmen of sealen en als je dat sterk genoeg maakt kan je er vormen mee maken.” Maar dat is slechts het begin. “Er gaat een heel vocabulaire in schuil: je kunt erin, erop, je kunt het ergens op
Pioneering with light and air Bob Witman
In 1965, 22-year-old Theo Botschuijver is cycling home from the Design Academy in Eindhoven, where he is studying to be an industrial designer. He passes a house where the outdoor lighting has been left on after a garden party. A layer of fog hanging ten meters above the ground reflects so much of the light that the trees, objects in the street and the fence are all clearly visible. It will be the inspiration for his graduation project: a series of inflatable white plastic clouds coated with a thin layer of reflective glass beads, onto which light is projected. The effect mimics the low-hanging mist patch of that evening in Eindhoven. This ingenious and poetic academy project reveals many of the motives that will form the strength of Botschuijvers (1943) rich œuvre in the coming decades: light, air, technology, playfulness and exploring boundaries. An œuvre perhaps more famous than its creator. The giant inflatable pig on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Animals, a walkon-water scene in the James Bond film Diamonds are Forever, the air-filled pavilions at the exhibition Sonsbeek beyond boundaries in 1971, Genesis’s first laser show in 1976, early computer animations, a Shiva statue on a bed of waving lotus flowers at Sensation White in 2000: all this is the work of a man who is fascinated by innovative technology and how technology gives meaning to our everyday lives. His work consists of objects, sculptures
and installations that fit in better on the street than in a museum. His work is almost always touchable, literally to jump or climb on, which always makes the viewer a part of – and sometimes even the owner of – the work. Children use his inflatable art as a bouncing floor surface, passers-by roll a large cushion through the city streets, local residents put alienating texts into the mouths of political leaders in a video installation and visitors lounge lazily on the inflatable floor of a temporary pavilion. For Theo Botschuijver, the sixties started in a large former farm just outside Eindhoven, where he lived with other academy students. During their graduation period, the farm became a spectacular ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ with contributions from all residents. This is when Botschuijver made his first ‘tubing event’: long, limp tubes of plastic blown up with air, causing them to move about in unpredictable patterns. He called this Instant sculpture. That tubing event, together with his graduation project, was the start of a layered series of ‘inflatables’, of which Botschuijver would soon discover the potential. “The principle of inflatable art is simple,” he says. “You can glue or seal plastic and if you make it strong enough you can make shapes with it.” But that’s just the beginning. “There is a whole vocabulary behind it: you can be in or on it, you can make it look like something, a drum kit or an octopus, or use it as architec ture. It’s an experience.”
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Works
1965 -2019
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Supertube 1968 ERG. Ouderkerk aan de Amstel and Wales
Supertube is an example of serendi pity, an accidental and unintentional discovery. Working on a large inflatable object, far away from a power outlet, I had to use a long tube to connect the inflatable with the blower. The pressure in the inflatable loosened the connecting tube and, once detached, it started to thrash about wildly. This was very annoying at the time, but later we looked at it again (it also ‘worked’ vertically) and realized that it had properties of its own: it very emphatically made no sense at all, but did so in a very interesting way. We called it ‘Supertube’. The unpredictable movements and the potential interactions with it are still popular today: several companies sell or rent out ‘supertubes’ under a variety of names as eye catchers or for advertising purposes.
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Photo right: in 1968 Jeffrey and I were invited by London based theatre maker Peter Dockley, to come to Wales and participate in activities around a miner’s strike. We installed our ‘Supertube’, a length of polythene tubing mounted on a powerful blower, in the middle of a group carrying a banner that read ‘Boredom Weeps’. The air current causes wild flapping and thrashing movements.
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Corpocinema 1967 ERG. Schouwburgplein Rotterdam and Museumplein Amsterdam (with the cooperation of Tjebbe van Tijen, Sigma Projects)
Corpocinema was an ‘expanded cinema’ environment with a number of perfor mances in public spaces in Rotterdam and Amsterdam in 1967. These were organized together with the ‘Sigma centrum’, an organisation hosting events, concerts and cinema, subsidized by the Amsterdam city council. Instead of the traditional cinematic flat screen, films were projected onto a three-dimensional structure, a large inflatable dome. From within, several physical actions and events with smoke, foam, confetti and paint distorted the image. As we projected documentary film clips by Unilever about soap fabrication onto the dome,
inside an actor held a fire extinguisher and was spraying foam, affecting the projected image on the outside. In this way we made a bridge between real time and film time. It was an experi mental manifestation.
Multimedia event: Experimental application from image projection and soaking the viewer out of his passive attitude from a mere consumer to an active participant. Tjebbe van Tijen, Art-Action-Academia
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Stills from the movie Waterwalk by Louis van Gasteren, 1970, 16 mm, 7 min.
How to walk on water without even getting your feet wet Two girls in a plastic bag. They were trying to get used to a rather novel sensation: walking on water. As might be expected: it does feel rather squashy. But oddly enough it does not feel wet. Apart from
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its enormous size it is basically just an ordenary plastic bag, inflated by a small mechanical pomp. Walking along the bottom of the bag it propells it gently in the desired direction, and it contains enough air for two people to go on strolling down the river for a good three
hours. If the occupants get tired, they can always lie down and just watch the slightly blurred scenery drift gently by. Daily Mirror, 1970
Waterwalk 1969 ERG. Sloterplas Amsterdam
With the triangular balloons of the Alp events we later ventured to walk on water… and indeed it worked! By shifting the weight of your body to the sides of the balloon it tipped over and you could ‘walk’ on water.
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2019 ERG. Re-enactment of the 1969 Waterwalk event in Amsterdam, Laguna Venice
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Lucidity and functional ity, that was the starting point of the idea from Theo Botschuijver and Jeffrey Shaw (the Event structure Research Group) for a plastic tube as a temporary ‘bridge’. Hundreds of delighted citizens and holiday makers were offered a possibility to cross the lake in a unique fashion. Nieuws, Stichting Industriële Vormgeving, 1970
During installation of the tube we found a non-sealed seam of about 1.5 meter at water level. After repairing the leak, we ‘collected’ the water to one spot (as shown here) and pumped it out, since the idea was to walk-on-water while keeping one’s feet dry.
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1971 Waterwalk Tube, Groningen (NL)
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Airground 1970-1971 ERG. Cultural Week, Indische Buurt Amsterdam Below Tomorrow’s World, BBC TV London
The Airground took the shape of a very large mattress, a rectangular envelope made from reinforced PVC fabric that was tightly inflated with air and held together with internal ties. This design prefigured the now ubiquitous inflatable ‘bouncy castles’.
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1974 ERG. Tabarka festival, Tabarka Tunesia
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Airground Floriade 1972 ERG. With the theme ‘Kind en Leefmilieu’ (Child and Environment) Amstelpark Amsterdam
Princes Beatrix and prince royal Willem Alexander visiting the Floriade exhibition
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Genesis: The Lamb 1974 ERG. Genesis’ concerts The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, world tour
Our first project for the concerts of the progressive rock group Genesis was a slide show produced for the iconic concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in 1974. It was a visual interpretation of Peter Gabriel’s song texts, projected on three screens over the whole width of the stage behind the band: 1 000 slides as a continuous accom paniment to the live performance, not as a randomly chosen light show but integrated into the musical dramatization.
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Performing Peter Gabriel’s epic The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to an overflow crowd Friday night in the Music Hall the British band pulled out all the stops in a stunning multimedia collage. Music, lyrics, slides and costumes all clearly relate the show
to shift from realistic to the fantastic. Genesis portrays an odyssian fantasy about an New York street punk named Rael. The story follows a surreal path through a nether world in the underground. Sucked into a dreamlike trance that often
took a nightmarish twist, the audience sat dumbfounded. Houston Chronicle, 1974
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Of course Battersea Power Station is an iconic thing in itself. The act of hanging a pig beween two of the towers also calls for a lot of attention, but I think most of the impact was caused by the fact that it flew away. It drew attention of the press in the form of articles and cartoons. Some people suggested it was done on purpose for publicity reasons (not true of course). We, the band, the crew
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and the security people of Heatrow were righteously very worried, but I had the impression that the general public consi dered it a dangerous stunt or a joke. The figure of speech: ‘If pigs had wings, they could fly’, meaning ‘there is no chance it would happen’, was contradicted in a spectacular way. From interview with Davide Tuccella, 9 August 2018
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Drumkit 1987 Inflatable drum kit for Cesar Zuiderwijk, drummer in the rock ’n’ roll band Golden Earring, the sound is made by a synthesizer, triggered by elements attached to the various ‘drums’
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Pigeon 1987 Flying peace symbol for a theatre performance in Israel (test) (commissioned by Ruth Meijer)
Party decoration
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