Sensible Horizon

The project consists of two elements that exist in a symbiosis - an open air-gallery and a supporting public liminary artwork.

The open air-gallery is made up of a temporary wall structure, with photographic portraits, that are curated by Jyllandsposten, placed along it. The wall structure follows the building site, which is next to the headquarters of Jyllandsposten and creates a passageway that stretches all the way from Kalkværksvej and down to Sydhavnsgade. This is a long stretch of wall, which means there are a lot of portraits to delve into.

The portraits however wouldn't normally come to their own right outside of daylight hours, which is where the public luminary artwork "Sensible Horizon" comes into play and alltogether heightens the experience of this public space significantly. Responsible artist André Maia, has created the luminary artwork from spare fixtures in the department of light's reserves. These fixtures have the possibility to shine light in a full spectrum of colors, but as this artwork is supporting an experience of viewing the portraits on the wall structure, André has designed a control system that limits itself within a field of white tones. The system relies on custom software, that slowly modulates these tones of white, so a dynamic experience is attained.

Visitors to the area after dark, will be able to experience a unique viewing of the portraits, under lighting that emulates the dynamic passing from one part of the natural daylight spectrum to another, in a relatively short timeframe. The differing lighting scenarios pull out different details in the portraits.

The project was a cooperative effort between Lys På Aarhus, Jyllandsposten, Aarhus Festuge and Bystrategi in Teknik & Miljø, with the aim of exploring how temporary cityscapes that are created by building sites, can serve as a basis for positive experiences, for citizens and visitors alike.

The project is in this sense temporary, but as the building site will be in place for years, there is ample opportunity to learn from the effect of this sort of installation, which takes spaces that traditionally seem unsafe and boring and turn them into meaningful areas.

On top of this, all this is achieved using a minimal set of resources, as most of the lighting system consists of spare parts, that can even easily be transplanted and transformed into other future locations.