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Two people stand within a vast, immersive installation of intersecting blue strings. The lines create a dense, geometric grid that fills the white room from floor to ceiling.

Art: Austrian collective Numen/For Use create the most fun-looking interactive sculpture

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Date
17 February 2014

There was a furore in London recently about some children climbing on a Donald Judd sculpture at Tate Modern (it “horrified” art lovers according to this not-at-all melodramatic journalist). Brilliant Austrian collective Numen/For Use have no truck with such quibbles though their artworks are designed to be clambered on, sat in and generally explored in the most fun ways imaginable.

Their latest work String has only so far been produced as a prototype but we are already impatiently counting the days until we can have a go. The whole structure is inflatable, so as it expands, the ropes tauten and visitors can move through the piece as they wish. “The bodies entrapped in a 3D grid, flying in unnatural positions throughout superficial white space, resemble Dadaist collages,” they say. “The impossibility of perception of scale and direction results in simultaneous feelings of immenseness and absence of space.”

Four people lounge and climb within a vast, three-dimensional grid of blue netting. The structure fills a bright white space, suspending the figures at different heights.
Above

Numen/For Use: String

Four people climb and lounge within a vast, three-dimensional grid of blue ropes. The installation fills a bright, airy space, creating a translucent web of intersecting lines.
Above

Numen/For Use: String

A person leaps through a vast, immersive installation of intersecting blue strings. The lines create a dense, geometric grid that fills the entire white space.
Above

Numen/For Use: String

A person hangs suspended within a vast, three-dimensional grid of blue strings. They hold onto a horizontal line with both hands, floating in the centre of the installation.
Above

Numen/For Use: String

Two people stand within a vast, immersive installation of intersecting blue ropes. The ropes create a dense, three-dimensional grid that fills the white gallery space.
Above

Numen/For Use: String

Three people climb and balance across a vast, intersecting grid of blue ropes. The ropes stretch across a bright, white space to create a complex 3D web.
Above

Numen/For Use: String

A large, white inflatable cube sits on a blue tarpaulin in an open outdoor space. A smaller, rounded inflatable structure is attached to its side by two white pipes.
Above

Numen/For Use: String

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About the Author

Rob Alderson

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Rob Alderson is a freelance writer, editor and strategist. He was previously editor-in-chief of It’s Nice That and WePresent, and editor of Design Week. He publishes the newsletter Undo, which tries to make sense of how AI is changing design work, the design process and the design industry.

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