Lichthouders

Surrounded by loops of sounds and lights

Client: Jonas Vorwerk

Services: Sound design

About the installation

The light artwork “Lichthouders” by Jonas Vorwerk is based on the gas holders, formerly located on the NRE site, in the shape of large, round storage spaces. Round, metal constructions of light elements placed on top of their historical ‘footprints’. These circulair elements display sound loops.

The concept of using sound loops and making them visible is inspired by the sound experiments done by Philips in the 60’s by artists like Dick Raaijmakers. Jonas Vorwerk created three “Lichthouders”, two with a diameter of 15 meters and one with a diameter of 21 meters, all have the same 3 meters height. Each object contains several hundreds of led pixels.

We created several audio loops for each circle. The audio loops are in sync with light animations so the movement and sound is directly visible. The sounds are moving around the public by using a 6 speaker setup.

About the process

After several meetings we started producing the sound palette for Lichthouders. Our first draft was quite experimental with a heavy note. Interesting, but it did not fit within the concept. Jonas wanted it to be a nice place where you would stay for a long time. The sounds therefore had to be peaceful and gentle so we started sketching again and came up with another draft. From that sound palette we designed different loops for the installation.