An Artistic System – Concert, Performance, Ceremony and Installations
The sounds and
colors of data
Performance
Peterskirche, Leipzig
Project Duration
70 Minutes
LUFT – Art of Air in performance.
If we could translate the state of the atmosphere into art, what would it look like?
LUFT aims to create a dynamic artistic system that responds to environmental data, making it an ever-changing work without a final form. Its structures and patterns differ with each performance. The project explores how sonification—combining sound signals with specific messages—can merge with artistic expression and reflect climate statistics, using atmospheric open data from the European Copernicus satellite system as its source. LUFT is an attempt to create organic works in a digital world.
In LUFT I am interested in the interplay between the precise and the emotional. I explore the boundaries between affective and fact-based expressions, by building bridges between (eg numerical) values and human values. LUFT seeks to evoke emotional reactions, encouraging us to rethink our relationship with perceived and actual values.
The Church,
a lung of the city
Performance
Leipzig
Project Duration
70 Minutes
Collective emotions
Can we use data to create emotionally engaging stories that show the collective impact of our behaviors, often unnoticed in daily life? We seldom consider the cumulative effect of our actions, which is a common challenge in all climate communication. LUFT addresses this by transforming the data into songs, adding emotions and context to information that is typically presented as a noun followed by a number.
Sound designer Mark Lowery to the right.
Air space
Performance
Åland Opera Festival, Kupolen
Project Duration
60 Minutes
Slow Change Blindness
LUFT addresses Slow Change Blindness, a mental limitation that makes it difficult for people to notice gradual changes in their environment. By reinterpreting data into artistic elements, these changes become more perceptible. Listeners must learn to recognize subtle musical and graphical shifts, similar to how we learned to read a clock as children. This learning process is an integral part of the work, explained through text, graphics, and lyrics during performances
Every though
needs a breath,
every note
a wave of air
Performance
Åland Opera Festival, Kupolen
Project Duration
60 Minutes
Weather of Voices
LUFT mixes voices from different genres, like opera, jazz and soul in a single work. Vocal ensembles are recorded and used in duett with live vocals during the performance. In Andacht Alterung (Part VIII) singers between the ages of three and seventy create a song depicting the aging of the human voice.
Air meets Fire
Performance
Chapel of St. Anne, Krobitz
Project Duration
40 Minutes
LUFT – Art of Air in rehearsal at the Chapel of St. Anne (Krobitz, Germany) including the fascinating fireorgan. Lisa Fornhammar, Sophia Günst, Madeleine Wulff.
CHALLENGES
LUFT focuses on the emotional and cognitive aspects of communication. It explores sonification, semiotics, and cognitive science to transform numerical data and statistics into forms that suit human aesthetic perception.
Halfdan Hauch Jensen
Lab manager at AIR LAB, Copenhagen IT-university. Halfdan’s work as interface designer and programmer has been instrumental in developing the process of translating data into other forms of expressions.
Copernicus Program Sentinel-3 satellite
Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring System (CAMS) offers open data that combines state-of-the-art computer models of the atmosphere, with satellite and non-satellite observations.
Peter Lång
Many challenging choises had to be made to create a path from satellite data to MIDI, DMX and other artistic control codes for stage performances.
Jakob Löndahl, Professor, Ergonomics and Aerosol Technology, Lund University
Jakob’s research, teaching, and science communication focus on medical and health applications of aerosols. This includes airborne particles in the lungs, the spread of airborne diseases, inhalation and deposition of air pollution, detecting lung diseases with aerosols, aerosol measurement techniques, and bioaerosols.
Levels of PM 2,5 & PM 10
Charting the levels of particle matter (PM 2,5 & PM 10) and publishing the results as open data is a part of the European satellite program Copernicus’s monitoring service. Image taken from the LUFT project experimental interface covering Leipzig, September 2022 (app by Halfdan Hauch Jensen).
The value of values
How scientists, artists and the public see an image, showing the sun shining through the clouds, offers a rich variety of aesthetic and scientific information. LUFT is an attempt to combine the two, addressing for example our inability to grasp “the bigger picture” and act upon it.
Poetical units,
new measures
Performance
Church of Uppåkra, Sweden
Project Duration
40 Minutes
For centuries, artists have been the eyes and ears of history as paintings and musical works capture the spirit and atmosphere of times gone by. LUFT continues the tradition by offering new means to understanding in an over-informed world.
Measurement is a mirror to society itself. To measure is to choose; to focus our attention on a single attribute and exclude all others. By measuring we reveal what we concider important in the world.
Rewards and punishments are measured in units. So is freedom and peace. Transforming values into units of music and colors is an important feature of LUFT.
Music as
artistic templates
Performance
Röstånga (2023)
Project Duration
40 Minutes
Artistic add-ons
The open form of LUFT also serves as an artistic template allowing occasional material to be added and interact with the professionally created foundation, for example with the works of children, making it a collective work of art.
LUFT can be modified to suit different forms of data, instrument settings, improvisations and be adjusted for certain locations; church concerts, performances with and for children or art festivals.
Sound designer Mark Lowery recording new sound contributions to LUFT.
AIR ART by 6-year olds
Hope in detail
Hard facts
Cold air, (detail)
Broken colors, (detail)
Music as
artistic templates
Performance
Ringar på vattnet, Ripples on the water,
Gala for Ukraine, Åland (2024)
Project Duration
20 Minutes
Artistic add-ons
Åland poet Carina Karlsson and Fredrik Erlandssnon, trumpet, presenting the poem “Givandets glädje/The Joy of Giving” to the music of LUFT (Atmosphere)
Poet Julia Musakovska from Lviv and Lydia Eriksson, cello, presenting poems written during the war in Ukraine, to the music of LUFT (Admission Anima).
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