Recent projects

CUMULU3

An interactive dual-user on-water light installation at the Copenhagen Light Festival 2025

CUMULU3 invites audience to participate in sharing their air to collectively blow multi-coloured animated bubble rings that come alive and grow and glow on the water surface.

See a short instagram movie here

Idé and execution: Arthur Maria Steijn • Creative development: Frederik Lauenborg

Thank you for your support and help: GF Ørestad (financial support), Copenhagen Light Festival,  Theo Bjerg Steijn & Asbjørn

90-ILLUMINI

A light project test at my academy in Copenhagen – a large digit display for writing text in customisable colour, variations and speed – seen from the outside

The digit display is driven by an Arduino with a SD card that can be loaded with a text in csv format. RGB-colour, speed, and colour-noise can be adjusted with knobs. Ultimately we like to have 6 digits, one for each window in the room.

Idé, electronics & execution: Arthur Maria Steijn • Creative development: Frederik Lauenborg

Thank you for your support: The Royal Academy, Anders Thulin

A-RE (Arti REspiratio)

An interactive luminous underwater creature at the Copenhagen Light Festival winter 2024 & at Aarhus Festuge in the summer of 2024

Arti Respiratio (A-RE), is an interactive luminous underwater creature, a kind of jellyfish. A-RE is not doing well in the cold Danish waters and needs the audience’s warm breath to get its colors and pulse back. The Gulf Stream has brought it here from its habitat, one of the world’s warm oceans.

A-RE is a tech-trash creature that has created itself by combining and assembling redundant and discarded electronics and technology that have been thrown into the oceans.

See a short instagram movie here

Idé and execution: Arthur Maria Steijn • Creative development: Frederik Lauenborg

Thank you for your support and help in Copenhagen: Christianshavns Lokaludvalg, Copenhagen Light Festival, Poul Andersen, Simon Christensen, Theo Bjerg Steijn

In Aarhus: Micha Schaarup, Ida Lundø and the beautiful people at Aarhus Festuge

Mother of Mermaids

Underwater Animated Light Installation for OPLYST festival in Hundested, Denmark 2024

Mother of Mermaids is an animated light installation located below the water surface in Hundested Harbour, with mythical maritime references to the time when sailors set sail on short and longer voyages. Adventurous journeys where the sight of the beautiful sea and beautiful skies were alternated with feelings of loneliness, lack of love and fantasies about what hidden beauty must be under the surface of the sea. The work is a tale of life and death, recreating the story of fantastic, beautiful, life-threatening and impossible love.

The installation expresses the fantastic in the form of light in motion that illuminates underwater as well as the fear of what actually hides beneath the surface of the water. The light is animated, and thus not constantly visible, so it is experienced as luminous and moving shapes that come into view in the evening in the dark water. See more here …

More on OPLYST can be found here …

In 2023 a smaller version was presented at the Kyndelmisse Køge Lysfest og Kulturnat 2023

Highlighted projects

Insomnia

Video installation design for a dance performance performed by the Danish Dance Theatre

Doing

Video- and animation design for classical music composed by Per Nørgård, performed live at the Royal Opera

430 Launched / 430 Søsat

Exhibition design for the opening of the Culture Yard in Elsinore

Midt om Natten

Animation & video graphics for large LED screen filling the background space behind the set-pieces.

For the musical based on Kim Larsens words and music – shows in Sweden, 2024 https://mittomnatten.se, after big succes and many shows in Denmark. See more here …

City Museum Exhibition Concept and Design

For Møntergården, the cultural history museum in Odense, Denmark

Concept art for a new exhibition for the cultural history museum in Odense, Denmark. Fantasy and mythology are explored through stories on past, present and future related to the power, technology and culture that is connected to the city of Odense.

In collaboration with Have Kommunication & PR and Jakob Ion Wille

Solur (Sundail)

In between sunlight and time

A unique sundial designed for just your place. Created for a geographical position, with exact longitude and latitude. These handmade and customized sundials are soon available for online sale in Denmark at www.solur.dk and in Holland at www.zonnewijzer-design.nl

FLASH-FORWARD: Storyworld, Interaction and Speculative Design

Artistic research project at the Royal Danish Academy

A 3-week workshop in storyword building, interaction and speculative design that resulted in interactive prototypes at an exhibition in November 2020.

For the project FLASH-FORWARD Graphical Communication Design (MA) students created spatial images of possible future worlds. What will the future look like in the light of present problems such as climate change, democratic crisis, sustainability, data control etc?

You can see more here, on the Royal Danish Academy’s website.

Idea and execution: Arthur Maria Steijn & Jakob Ion Wille
Guest speakers: Kirsten Astrup, Michael Valeur, Jakob Thorbek, Natalie Koerner, Martin Sønderlev Christensen, Mikael Fock, Oscar Stockholm

Methods and results of FLASH-FORWARD: Storyworld, Interaction and Speculative Design

are presented by Jakob Ion Wille & Arthur Steijn at:

IMAGINING THE IMPOSSIBLE

UTOPIA & DYSTOPIA CONFERENCE
Conference on the Fantastic in Media Entertainment, May 27-29, 2021 (Extended date)