NAVET at Nobel Week Lights 2024 with sound and light installations
Through this light and sound installation, visitors can immerse themselves in the world of bioluminescence by exploring and interacting with a multisensory space with their body, becoming bioluminescent themselves.
Shimomura’s research on bioluminescence, the phenomenon where chemical reactions within living organisms produce light, involved studying the glowing jellyfish Aequorea victoria. From this jellyfish, he successfully isolated GFP, a fluorescent protein.
Various organisms, either flying in the air, living in the oceans, or sprouting from the ground, can glow. This quality has been proven to be replicable in laboratories. Finding the key to how a marine organism produces light unexpectedly, provided researchers with powerful tools to visualize cellular processes in action.
LUCIFERIN explores the phenomena of bioluminescence; the skill organisms apply to glow in the dark – above and under the sea level, such as fireflies, the jellyfish Aequorea Victoria, and the plankton Alexandrium Ostenfeldii. The installation invites the audience to discover their curiosity and raises questions about exploring the unknown. The audience is called to communicate with the site, which in turn answers with ever-changing combinations of music, sound, and light. Bioluminescence is a powerful survival strategy; sometimes, it deters, and at other times, it attracts.
The installation is created in collaboration between two Stockholm universities; KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) and SKH (Stockholm University of the Arts), part of KTH NAVET Center, a multidisciplinary research hub, in collaboration with Costanza Julia Bani’s artistic research project All what Flickers and Glows.
SKH students:
Michael Forsberg, Lars Bomanson, Emilia Sundberg
Supervisors:
Costanza Julia Bani (SKH), Roberto Bresin (KTH), Federico Favero (KTH), Foteini Kyriakidou (KTH)