Echoes: Helios Film and Cultural House, Faaborg, 2016

In situ, Helios Film and Cultural House, Faaborg, Denmark
55 lamp objects, in black & white acrylic, powder-coated aluminum, mounted with RGB LEDs, custom software, weather station, light, and motion sensors.

Created for the Danish Arts Foundation, Architects: Vandkunsten, 2016.

The work is based on the idea of a house in motion and ongoing development. A house that can modulate its content and move according to the needs and energies of the time and the future. As the house evolves freely over the years, the artwork also lives its own self-generating and autonomous life.

In direct extension of the building's architecture, a performative work has been created, derived from both mathematical and intuitive systems, which distills the building’s location and use and turns it outward in an abstract and character-defining interpretation. The work balances between the controlled and the willful, the designed and the random.

The cultural house's architecture and materials have been considered from the outset in the way the artwork functions. The geometric system of the artwork, made up of specially manufactured lamps, has grown in dialogue with the building’s grid, and the outer shell of the facade comes into play as the light grabs hold of the polycarbonate panels and gives the lamps a prismatic effect that changes character depending on the vantage point of the observer.

Impulses from the house's interior and external influences, such as weather, time, and movements in and around the building, are channeled through the artwork’s control system. This system captures and transforms these inputs, and guided by an invisible hand, the geometric abstractions emerge and spread across the 500 m² facade area, weaving freely in and out of each other, continuously creating new compositions and color schemes.

Photo: Jacob Noel/Daniel Madsen