Creating a space filled with motion, sound and colour. Custom-built LED light fixtures married to mutli-channel surround sound.

The project Grex Lucis is a collaborative audio-visual installation by MOTET, which consists of sound artist Þorsteinn Eyfjörð and digital artist Owen Hindley.

It’s a continuation of the artists’ work bringing together audio, movement, colour, light and space into a single experience that evokes sensations and emotions, in an abstract form that allows the viewer’s own perception and memories to fill in the gaps left by this low-resolution, but physically large piece.

In this piece, the artists move through five distinct chapters, ranging from eruptive, percussive and jagged cinematic forms, to glitchy, high-frequency transmission and exchange of information inspired by Ryoji Ikeda, to radiant waves of M83-esque sonic euphoric beauty, accompanied by finely tuned beams of colour evoking James Turrell.

At its core is a 20-piece custom-made, high-framerate LED lighting sculpture suspended from the ceiling and multi-channel audio system. The system is fully designed and built by the artists, using the latest in LED, sound and control technology, allowing the artists to finely compose and choreograph all the sensory elements from the delicate subtle textures of field recordings, sweeping swells of power and colour that move throughout the space, to scintillating percussive impacts that punctuate the chapters.

Field recordings from Iceland form the foundation of the audio material, enriched by acoustic recordings of violins, cello, and modular synthesizers. These soundscapes are further processed through custom-built systems in MAX MSP and PPOOLL audio environments to craft a layered, evolving experience that responds dynamically to the installation space.

Visual material and architectural planning is created and pre-visualised in data-driven design tools such as TouchDesigner and Houdini, with the control system written in Arduino on ESP32 controller boards driving HD108s LED strips. This allows the artists to pre-design the entire performance before arriving on-site, before making site-responsive adjustments as required.

Houdini pre-visualisation :