Above Average Inflation, with Matthew Muller
With the first debate of 2024 presidential contest taking place this evening, we felt it important to address local inflation. We spoke with local expert Matthew Muller (he/him), a designer, builder, and co-founder of Pneuhaus. Matt’s work balances adaptation, function, and lightness, and in our opinion, is radical in all senses of the term. Matt’s also a member of the Below and Above Collective, a group of 6 artists and a botanist that build floating wetland sculptures to clean small water bodies.
TW: Hey Matt, thanks for making some time for us. So, inflatables. For readers who want to dive right in, where should they look that’s a level past the Macy’s Day Parade?
Inflatocookbook by Antfarm is the perfect DIY inflatable intro (MIT, PDF). Thomas Herzog’s Pneumatic Structures (Internet Archive) is more technical, offering amazing examples of what is possible. Also, Thinking By Modeling by Frei Otto—the importance of model making in our [Pneuhaus] practice cannot be overstated, and much of that is inspired by Frei Otto.
TW: Since you mentioned Otto...do you have a list that’s like “Our favorite Expo-style Pavilions?”
(MM): One of our favorite contemporary groups is Numen / For Use. Their recent work Net Milan is a masterpiece. Their work is such a great balance of playful exploration of space, innovation, and technical execution.
TW: And from PneuHaus—what’s your go-to intro piece; a work that sums up what your studio’s all about?
(MM): I think we all agree that Compound Camera is our favorite piece. It takes the simple camera obscura mechanism and applies it to a double membrane inflatable. The outcome is totally transformative. Watching visitors go through the process of wondering what the heck they are looking at to figuring it out is still satisfying 7 years later.
Above: Matt in the Pneuhaus studio
TW: Maybe a boring logistics Q but, when you’re shipping works like this out of state, are you present for installations? Or does the customer manage setup?
(MM): 90% of the time we install the work. Sometimes if it's a simple piece or the client is a museum with art handlers we can send instructions. The set up is usually a lot faster than you would think. We unpack the inflatable, find our power source, anchor it, and inflate.
TW: So the studio takes on ambitious, often experimental projects and you’ve managed to make it through the pandemic. Can you give some insight on the finances here—how’s it been possible?
(MM): Because inflatables pack up so small we are able to keep our sculptures, ship them cheaply around the country and world to install them over and over again. This is the only way we were able to get started a business. Now about half of our income is from custom fabrication since not many people (especially in the U.S.) can make high quality inflatables.
TW: But where did the initial investment come from? Side job savings, other client work?
(MM): All three founders graduated from college with zero debt. This is the foundation that made Pneuhaus possible. We didn't have any large investment, but not having debt looming over us gave us the flexibility to take risks and follow an uncertain path. The first year, we rented a small warehouse and six of us lived there while the three of us started building our first Pneuhaus pieces—these jobs came in after our day job hours. I had a truck that my parents gave me and I'm sure one of our parents helped us get the first sewing machine. The first few months our parents helped supplement our income, but we really kept things lean. Then we got a couple big jobs and stumbled into the financial model of building a piece for material cost, and renting it out over the years to pay off the labor and that has worked pretty well. It took three years to get to the point where we could afford to live somewhere other than in the studio.
Above: Matt working on Below and Above: A Floating Wetland Supports Life
TW: We imagine across those first three years, not everything you wanted to make got made? What’s on the horizon now ?
(MM): We have a huge stack of unaccepted proposals, some of which should never be made, but many of which we would make in a heartbeat. I am the practical problem solver in the group so I get overwhelmed by many of our more ambitious ideas. A lot of our ideas are complex climbing structures. Figuring out how to do them in a safe way without compromising the idea is a challenge, but we will do it soon. Also, we are finally making shade structures! They are giant leaf-like sculptures that will hopefully keep people cool and make them feel like ants!
TW: Does client work ever get in the way of more general discovery and research? Or how do you balance the agency side of the studio with the experimental?
Matthew Muller (MM): Every Friday at our studio is called "Fun Friday". We don't schedule meetings, we avoid client work, and we try to foster a sense of playful exploration to develop new ideas and techniques. When we started the studio we would do this after hours, but we burned out after several years. Then when our practice felt stagnant and like we were recycling old ideas we decided to commit our Fridays to fostering exploration. It is working great and has already led to a better practice and more fun work environment.
TW: The physical conditions in-studio, compared to where your works are most often installed, are a lot more controlled and predictable. What happens when nature’s involved?
(MM): In 2017 we had a 40ft dome made of beach balls blow apart like a dandelion during Aphex Twin’s first live performance in the U.S. in eight years. It was a difficult installation and we were so happy to celebrate by watching Aphex Twin's performance. A few minutes into the set the temperature dropped 15 degrees, shrinking the air in the beach balls. A hard rain started which made the beach balls slippery, and then 40+ mph winds came out of nowhere. The three of us (Augie, Levi, and myself) looked at each other with eyes as open as they could get; we knew this storm was trouble. As we scrambled to get to the dome we saw individual beach balls rolling over the crowd. By the time we got close we saw people were treating the former-dome as a ball pit, having the time of their lives punching beach balls and rolling around. Over the next hour or two we scrambled to get people away and come and get all the loose balls under a giant tarp. Luckily it was all soft and no one was hurt. We have a great respect for the power of wind these days and have never had an injury from it. I credit that traumatic evening for our clean record sense.
Above: Matt across the years, learning by doing
TW: There is a Bucephalus Bouncing Beach Ball joke here but, not sure how to land it. What have you learned about design and fabrication by observing how the public’s interacting with your work, Aphex-disaster aside.
(MM): Well the main lesson learned from the Aphex disaster was structural. But generally the context of the event greatly changes the audience reaction. Family-orientated public art/music events in cities are amazing. We see the broadest mix of people confused and enthralled with our work. At music festivals there is usually a mix of intoxicated entitlement that is rough on our work. Pretty much anything that can happen will happen... so we have learned to limit what pieces we expose to that environment and how to design around it.
TW: And how’d you get into making. Personally. Were you always a builder / tinkerer?
(MM): Looking back, it is definitely the 'forts' or 'huts' we would build at recess and in my backyard. Throughout my childhood I never saw how those experiences would play into a career since it was just fun and effortless. Throughout my high school years I thought I was a 2D artist until I got to RISD and met people who found 2D art as effortless as I found building.
TW: In your early fort-building years, did you have a lot of support around the arts? Good programs at school, etc?
Matthew Muller (MM): I was terrible at [high] school and would get in a lot of trouble coming up with ways to entertain myself in the classroom and out. As the youngest in a family of high academic achievers my parents were bewildered, but incredibly supportive. Once they saw how much I loved to create they filled my schedule with extra art class, gave me materials and encouraged me to follow my interests. I still do not know if they understand the extent I cheated to graduate high school though.
Above: Matt wearing an inflatable watermelon in support of Palestine
TW: What made school so challenging, and how’d you overcome it to get into a leading arts college?
(MM): I just don't learn well through abstraction. I'm very tactile, I learn best when I manipulate things and observe the results. Luckily, my elementary school was Montessori so I did thrive there, but my highschool was classical Latin and I didn't stand a chance. I had a C average and a decent SAT, but my portfolio is what got me into RISD. I credit my parents for all the art academy classes they put me in after school or in the summer. My dad, who is an architect, also had a hobby of painting so all that exposure helped me build a large body of work to pick from.
TW: With family, friends, or professionally—what’s the furthest from home you’ve traveled? What did it teach you?
(MM): Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It was a complicated decision to accept the job given the political situation there and I would not do it again, but I am grateful for what I learned there. It is the only time I have been to a predominantly Islamic country or Asia at all. Growing up in a post-9/11 America the Islamophobia baked into our media is so pervasive I found myself confronting subconscious Islamophobic thoughts. The best example of this is the first time I heard the call to prayer I realized I got anxious. The only times I heard that growing up was in films or tv shows about the "war on terror". I cannot think of a single show I watched growing up that depicted Islam without "terrorism". After a few days of hearing the entire city pause for it, I was able to rewire my brain and slow down to hear it for its beauty.
TW: In Riyadh—what was the actual project executed?
(MM): Grove was installed at an art exhibit indoors for 3 months. We installed it and came back to pack it up at the end.
Above: Pneuhaus’ dome for Aphex Twin; the calm before the storm
TW: If Riyadh was a complicated decision politically, what works have felt more aligned with your own values?
(MM): Inflatables are great for protests! We made an inflatable vulva for Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot) which they took to the Indiana state capitol. We have made inflatable abortion pills for women's rights activists, an inflatable Textron missile with blood to protest RISD's connection to the arms manufacturer, and an inflatable watermelon for pro Palestine protests. That one has been used many times in Providence, and was a staple at the Harvard encampment and commencement walk out. We made a couple dozen inflatable seats/shields that were sent to other student encampments around the country, too. When we see injustice in the world we often think what an inflatable could do to help. Usually the answer is nothing, but we do what we can to help.
TW: With all of these inflatables and their many uses...a constant is plastic. Any parting thoughts on that?
(MM): At Pneuhaus we work with plastic and I can't picture a way that could work without. Our view on sustainability is focused on lightness and striving to use specific polymers that have a lower impact. We use minimal material and energy to produce, transport, and install our work. Biology is always optimizing for these things and we find endless inspiration for our work in the living world. For now it is mostly structures, but someday we will figure out how to eat our sculptures when we are done with them. Until then, we will emulate biology in treating all our material as precious.
TW: Thanks, Matt, we appreciate your time and projects!
Readers: We didn’t have time to go deep on Matt’s work with Below and Above, but we really suggest following up to learn more. Eco RI News has a great piece on their entry to the Art on the Trails project.
