EQUINOX - Installations and Concert at KTH Reaktorhallen

Lost Ether is a transmission-based installation exploring the history and materiality of radio. The work employs local-range FM transmitters, each broadcasting a segment of an audio essay that traces how the historical understanding of “ether” shifted from a propagating medium to discrete waveforms—and lost in a transitional period of physics where nonlinear scientific narratives emerged.

Presented in the R1 Reaktor Hall, where all external wireless signals are isolated, the audience experiences the spatial and material properties of radio. Moving through the space while listening via handheld FM receivers, one can sense the peripheries of transmission zones, uncovering information that is at once universal and profoundly local.

The audio essay is developed under the KTH course on History of Science and Technology.

Registration is required for the radio walks: www.nortic.se/ticket/show/325826

Lost Ether is programmed during EQUINOX as part of our Student-led events initiative.

The installation presents an unfolding, contingent sonic layer generated by computational processes and situated environmental conditions. Visitors are invited to move through the space, immersing themselves in the iridescent soundscape.

After the experience, visitors, upon giving their consent, may engage in brief follow-up discussions with the researcher to share their impressions of the installation which will inform the research process.

Somnosphere is an immersive audiovisual installation transforming sleep into a shared space. Two distant sleepers form a closed loop by listening to each other’s sonified brain data, while visitors experience this exchange in real time through responsive sound and visuals.

Abhishek Choubey

Somnosphere is presented by Abhishek Choubey. Abhishek is a PhD student in the MSCA Doctoral Network Lullabyte at the Department of Media Technology and Interaction Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Lullabyte is an international network of researchers investigating the effects of music and sound on sleep. Initially formed by thirteen academic institutions and six non-academic institutions from across Europe, the network is centred on ten fully-funded doctoral projects which began in 2023. Work conducted on these projects is highly interdisciplinary involving interactions between diverse fields such as musicology, neuroscience, psychology, and computer science. The Lullabyte network is funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions an EU programme aimed at promoting early-career research. By bringing together leading European institutions this project realises a training programme that integrates outstanding research with innovative learning approaches. The artistic project Somnsophere was produced jointly by all the doctoral candidates of Lullabyte together. This installation incorporates knowledge from all of the candidates’ disciplines to produce an immersive visual and sonic representation of the sleep experience.

lullabyte.eu/

www.instagram.com/lullabyte_dn/

Ada’s Sol is a knitted software artwork that translates one of the earliest computer programs into a tactile-visual textile piece. Inspired by Ada Lovelace’s 1842 “Note G” for the Analytical Engine, the piece encodes the calculation of Bernoulli numbers as a pattern knit in yarn, where each column and row represents the changing variables of the algorithm. By translating mathematical operations into the textile structure, the work connects the histories of computing and textile craft—two practices historically linked through the punch-card logic of the Jacquard loom. Through the entanglement of code and yarn, Ada’s Sol blurs the boundary between what is considered “soft” craft and “hard” technology. The piece adopts a feminist approach to challenge the gendered divisions that have historically separated textile labour from computer science, highlighting shared logics of repetition, pattern, symmetry, and embodied manual work. By materializing software as fabric, the work demystifies computation and situates Lovelace within a broader lineage of textile and technological knowledge, inviting viewers to read fabric as information and to recognize programming as a human, accessible practice rather than an abstract machine process.

Hello, World! is a woven paper sculpture created from the Pascal User Manual and Report. The pages were cut into strips, and reassembled through weaving, causing the original text to be illegible. The sculpture explores the parallels between weaving and code, using grids as a structural framework that organises both thread and instruction into ordered, repeatable patterns. The work highlights how abstract instructions can be translated into both material or digital forms. Ultimately, Hello, World! reframes code not as a readable language but as a material pattern, signifying process, structure, and labour.

Hello, World! was developed as part of the KTH course DM260V Communicating Science Through Art and Art Through Science

Sonja Theodora Joanna Lindell

Sonja Theodora Joanna Lindell is a Stockholm-based multi-media artist. Lindell received a Bachelor of Fine Art from Parsons School of Design in New York City in 2019. Driven by grief and familial craftsmanship, Lindell’s artistic practice explores memory, reconstruction, and impermanence through labour-intensive paper-based processes. By using personal archival materials such as: photographs, letters, used envelopes, and remnants of earlier work, she weaves and sews fragments together as visual metaphors for piecing together identity. Lindell cuts and reassembles printed matter into woven and sewn grid structures that render original images and text illegible, drawing parallels between structure and chaos to find comfort in grief. Across her work, abstract instructions, and personal histories are translated into material form, emphasising process, and the labour embedded in acts of reconstruction.
www.instagram.com/joannalindell/

www.joannalindell.com/

Symbiotic Signals is an interactive installation that explores subtle physiological and mechanical parallels between human breathing and forest ecosystems. The project consists of a kinetic mobile made of branches and natural fibers that responds to a viewer’s breath and movement creating an embodied experience of co-regulation between human and non-human systems. Drawing on research in tree sway dynamics, oscillation damping, and breath regulation connected to the autonomic nervous system, the installation invites participants to slow down, attend to their breathing, and notice how small actions can influence the surrounding environment.

Home is a painting, acrylic on canvas, that invites the viewer to be drawn into one of our ecosystems - the forest. Scientific evidence has shown a relaxing effect of forests on the human nervous system, illustrating how, spending time in nature can help relieve stress. Thus, this painting invites the viewer to reflect on their connection to nature and the exploration of nature's impact on their own lives. 

Symbiotic Signalswas developed as part of the KTH course DM260V Communicating Science Through Art and Art Through Science

The project explores quantum randomness as a source for generative art, highlighting how it differs from classical pseudorandomness. Drawing on single photons produced by Spontaneous Parametric Down-Conversion (SPDC) in a quantum optics laboratory, the four-channel acousmatic installation translates photonic events into sonic events, unfolding against a background soundscape of electromagnetic recordings from the laboratory. The audience can hear the type of randomness detected by photon counters, with temporal intervals rescaled (mapping 1 picosecond in the original photon timestamp data to 0.1 second in SuperCollider, slowing down the events by 10¹¹× to make them audible).

Photonic pairs (signal and idler) emitted from SPDC are routed to separate speakers. These photons are entangled — detecting one photon provides information about the other. Entangled photon pairs are currently being studied for quantum communication, for example by sending one photon through an optical fiber while the other is stored in a quantum memory.

The work is developed under the KTH course on Communicating Science Through Art and Art Through Science, and made possible through collaboration with FITS Technische Universität Berlin.

Sonification by Edy Fung

Single photon source by Xavier Barcons Planas

Sonification of Quantum Randomness was developed as part of the KTH course DM260V Communicating Science Through Art and Art Through Science

The exhibition presents the culminating work of two group of students from the Master’s Programme in Architectural Lighting Design at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Developed as part of the academic exploration Daylight Manifestations, the project translates theoretical ideas about lighting design into spatial and experiential propositions.

Inspired by the ancient Nordic legend of the sun stone, on one hand, and by the site-specific conditions on the other, this mythical and speculative proposal explores a situational and seasonal encounter of human experience through daylight. Through conceptual design, experimental testing, and the construction of scale models studied under a daylight simulator, students investigate how natural light can shape atmosphere, emotion, and perception.

The result are two proposals that place daylight at the centre of architectural experience. Moving between science, myth, and design speculation, the Sun Stone and Trädljushus projects invites visitors to explore how daylight and the lack of it can transform the spaces we inhabit and the ways we encounter them.

Sun Stone project by: Tina Eklund, Bettymaya Foott, Paula Karcher

Trädljushus project by: Agate Hinca, James Wray McGowan and Zane Tropina

(Architectural Lighting Design Students at KTH)

Teacher: Rodrigo Muro