Airworks Inflatables
Airworks Inflatables is a Dutch-based company from Amsterdam, which specializes in producing mainly large-scale inflatable structures and sculptures for live shows and concerts, theatre performances, ceremonies and other events. These include structures, which would otherwise be too heavy or too big to lug around on an everyday basis on tours.
Airworks have made sculptures for shows of musical artists like "[U2]]", "Madonna", "Miley Cyrus", "Avenged Sevenfold", "Iron Maiden", "Metallica", "Lady Gaga" & more. They've also made elements for both traveling and in-house theatre shows like "Ice Age On Ice", musical performances at Ahoy, and "Andre Kuipers Spacexperience". In addition to that, they've also contributed to electronic music events like "Sensation" in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and "Qlimax" in 2016. Their inflatable structures have also been part of the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies, 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic ceremonies and UEFA Euro 2012 and 2016 ceremonies, to name a few.
Airworks were first utilised by Muse to produce a large inflatable physical version of the large robot skeleton, known as the "Creator", seen in Simulation Theory's music videos (most notably that of The Dark Side), for their 2019 Simulation Theory World Tour. The model was nicknamed as "Murph the Robot". The model spread across the entire width of the stage, sitting behind it. It was hung from trussing via wires, with the ability to move its arm and its head, while also open its mouth, with a spotlight hanging inside, illuminating the crowd, while moving and swaying left to right. Two puppets were created. A smaller one was used for arena and festival shows, while a bigger one was used for stadium shows. Being made out of regular fabric, during the pandemic in 2020, Airworks dismantled some of their inflatables, and made face masks out of them. This was also done to the stadium version of "Murph".[1]
In 2022, for the Will of the People Summer Festivals Tour, Airworks once again built a large model of a character used in the album's music videos. This time, it was the hooded and masked rioter, nicknamed as "Will the Hacker". Like Murph, it is positioned behind the band, however, it is made up of three separate pieces, sitting on stage, and only able to move its head left to right. While Murph was only intended to be used in 2019 during the Simulation Theory tour, it made a one-time comeback for this 2022 tour, replacing "Will the Hacker" for the show at Rock in Rio Lisbon, when "Will" couldn't be brought in due to logistics.
See also
- Airworks Inflatables website
- Murph the Robot
- Simulation Theory World Tour
- Will of the People Summer Festivals Tour