Tomas Saraceno’s ‘In Orbit’ Suspends Visitors Over 65 Feet High

German artist Tomas Saraceno has created his largest art installation yet. With ‘In Orbit,’ a metal net is suspended over 65 feet above the piazza of K21 Ständehaus in Germany where visitors are welcomed to climb up and explore the quasi-invisible surface. It took 3 years of planning with engineers, architects, and arachnologists – experts on spiders and spider webs – to make the large-scale project possible. The multi-layered net is accessible in 3 levels separated by a series of air-filled PVC balls measuring up to 27 feet in diameter. Saraceno’s fascination with nature is often conceptualized in his art which becomes apparent in this project where reverberations in the net is similar to the vibration spiders feel for in their webs.
However, Saraceno’s concept for the net runs much deeper than the obvious connection to the spider web: “When I look at the multilayered levels of diaphanous lines and spheres, I am reminded of models of the universe that depict the forces of gravity and planetary bodies. For me, the work visualizes the space-time continuum, the three-dimensional web of a spider, the ramifications of tissue in the brain, dark matter, or the structure of the universe. With ‘in orbit,’ proportions enter into new relationships; human bodies become planets, molecules, or social black holes.”

To view another article about mesmerizing net installations, try Janet Echelman’s Beautiful Net Sculptures.