Our breath is formless and invisible — lost to us once exhaled — unless it is enveloped and given shape with a balloon, a soap film or water.

Catch Your Breath is an experience where the visitor captures their own breath as a bubble in a tank of water using high-speed flash photography. The work toured Australia between 2017 and 2020 with the Experimenta Make Sense International Triennial of Media Art as the Catch Your Breath Project.

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First shown at the Every Breath exhibition at The Lock-Up, Newcastle, December 2016 to January 2017, where around 2000 visitors blew a total of almost 5000 unique and beautiful bubbles.

Following a one-day exhibition at the Brisbane QUT Robotronica exhibition where 420 breaths were captured, the work toured with the Experimenta Make Sense International Triennial of Media Art from 2017 to 2020. The touring work included the ability to ‘share’ breaths online and to build an archive of the collective breath of participants. The project explores the idea of a collective breath as a means of drawing individuals together. Shared breaths and more details about the project are available at catch-your-breath.com.

Data collected from each exhibition is being used in the You Are Here project to consider the question “If we could track the air from each captured breath as it was carried by the wind around the world, where is it now?”. Scientific modelling software for tracking air developed by the US NOAA organisation is being applied to this question.

An image from the project has been selected as part of an exhibition touring the UK that explores how the breath is understood and experienced.

Installation views of Robotronica and Experimenta (Melbourne) exhibitions:

Installation views of original The Lock Up exhibition: