Simon Gordeau

Design - Product Design

Accumulative Input Resevoir

Simon’s graduation project explores how efficiency shapes everyday life. In a world where everything is expected to become faster, smarter and more optimized, he questions what this constant drive for efficiency actually does to us. Inspired by kinetic art and industrial machinery, he creates installations in which motion takes centre stage, while progress itself remains uncertain: machines that technically function, but produce an outcome that feels wildly disproportionate to the effort put into them.
In this installation, an old hand pump is used to inflate a balloon through a chain of deliberately unnecessary steps. By sending the energy through multiple mechanical connections first, the machine creates an absurdly roundabout route toward an extremely simple result. The balloon acts as a physical storage of human effort, but also as a symbol of wasted energy: fragile, temporary, and ultimately filled with nothing more than air.
The project investigates how inefficiency can be made visible and tangible. While technology is becoming increasingly invisible and frictionless, this machine revolves around resistance, delay and excess. In doing so, it becomes a physical translation of a familiar feeling: a lot of movement, a lot of effort, and the lingering question of how much it truly amounts to in the end.

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