Floating Pixels: Balloon Media and Smart City Experiments

What if public space could be transformed not by concrete and steel, but by balloons?

In Singleton, FASTlab collaborators Ralph Kenke and Elmar Trefz asked exactly that. Their experiment, Balloon Media, created an interactive installation of illuminated balloons designed to act as “floating pixels” — reshaping how people experienced a familiar place.

Featured in The Elephant’s Leg II: Creativity in Action, this project wasn’t just about spectacle. It was a lesson in design complexity, problem-solving, and smart-city innovation.

Designing with air

At first glance, Balloon Media looks simple: balloons filled with light, clustered together in public space. But behind the installation was a deep set of challenges

• Engineering: how to anchor and power inflatable, light-filled units in outdoor conditions.

• Interaction: how to make the balloons responsive to human presence and playful engagement.

• Safety + sustainability: ensuring durability, public safety, and reusability within a community context.

Every step required improvisation, technical know-how, and creative problem-solving.

Why it matters

• Smart city innovation: Balloon Media shows how light, interaction, and design can shape perceptions of safety and liveability without heavy infrastructure.

• Agility in practice: unlike fixed installations, inflatables can be mobile, adaptable, and low-cost — perfect for testing ideas in real time.

• Creativity as engineering: the project blurred lines between art, design, and urban technology, making each discipline dependent on the others.

  
  

Lessons from floating pixels

The takeaway from Balloon Media is simple: creative R+D embraces risk, iteration, and play. It’s about pushing prototypes into the public realm, learning from what works (and what doesn’t), and evolving ideas with community feedback.

In Singleton, balloons became more than decoration. They became a platform for imagining different futures of public space.

📖 Explore the Balloon Media case study in The Elephant’s Leg II: Creativity in Action: Read the book