Type: Site-specific outdoor light installation Scale: 8 m high, enveloping the museum facade
Role(s): Concept, design , engineering, fabrication lead, light programming
Structure: Diagrid lattice of side-glow fiber optic and copper wire, parametrically modeled in Grasshopper
Light engines: 4 × Universal Fiber DMX engines
Control: CueCore 3 architectural DMX controller, networked for remote management
Effect: Slow pulsating animation, with moving shadows cast by an empty color-wheel rig raking across fiber regions
Pre-visualization: Blender
On display: February – mid-April 2024, Copenhagen Light Festival
Credits:
Anders Jansson - sculptor (base and trunk)
Erik Sauffaus - graphic design (signage)
Louise Kongsted - fabrication
Eleftheria Zagka - fabrication
Mounting, anchoring and carpentry by museum technical staff
Supported by Lemvigh-Müller Fonden
Overview
The museum's first festival piece designed and built in-house, Yggdrasil grew from the museum's purpose: weaving stories from the past into an understanding of the present. The Norse world tree gave it form — a glowing canopy wrapping the facade rather than standing before it — and weaving runs through the piece on every level: the Norns spinning fate from thread, the fibers echoing both those threads and modern internet cabling, and an old craft building the structure itself.
Structure
On its own, the fiber reads as a few faint lines in the dark. Woven into a crossing lattice, it gains the rigidity to hold its shape and the flexibility to adjust on site, while the layered threads optically combine into branches that appear to have real volume.
Lighting
The empty color wheel was porgrammed to periodically cast shadows over the fibers for added organic nuance in the animation, simulated and pre-visualized in Blender.
The build
I led the build end to end, coordinating the on-site production team. The installation stayed up after the festival closed, keeping the museum visible online and, after hours, in person.