A park filled with fireflies, illuminated orbs you can kick into action and heartbeats that are transformed into light. These are some of the artworks presented during this year’s Nobel Week Lights. Today marks the release of the programme for the light festival, featuring seventeen light installations inspired by Nobel Prize laureates. The festival runs from 2-10 December.
“It is wonderful that we can once again offer everyone who lives in and visits Stockholm the opportunity to join us in celebrating this year’s Nobel Prize laureates,” says Erika Lanner, Director of the Nobel Prize Museum. “The light festival is a fantastic opportunity to illuminate science and culture during the period when Stockholm is at its darkest. I encourage everyone to take a December stroll and experience the Nobel Week Lights.”
Two of the works are inspired by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates, who will be honoured during the Nobel Week in Stockholm. At Strömparterren, a small waterside park below the Swedish Parliament, you will find three large light globes created by Canadian artists Lucion Média. Inside these colourful orbs, a dancing shadow play will be visible, the story it tells is inspired by the dramas and prose works of this year’s literature laureate Jon Fosse. The three 2023 physics laureates − Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier − have sparked the imagination of students at Beckmans College of Design, who are creating an installation with attoseconds in mind.
This year the light festival has attracted one of the world’s most prominent light artists. Miguel Chevalier is one of the pioneers of virtual and digital art and his works have been shown all over the world in places such as New York, Singapore, Morocco and Brazil. His work at the Stockholm City Museum, ‘Magic Carpets’ consists of interactive projections that transform as the visitor walks through them. The imagery of these projections is inspired by images and symbols found in science.
Many of the artworks are interactive, enabling visitors to influence the works with their feet and hands. At the Stockholm City Museum, French artist Miguel Chevalier has created magic carpets that interact with visitors as they walk on them. Rendering: Miguel Chevalier
The work that will be on display at the City Hall will draw attention to Stockholm’s history and art history, as well as the City Hall’s strong connection to the Nobel Prize festivities. The magnificent play of light on the façade is also a tribute to the Stockholm City Hall building itself, which this year celebrates its centenary. Among other things, you will be able to see how the City Hall was built − brick by brick.
One of the artistic light installations will link football to physics. Niels Bohr’s model of the atom made its breakthrough in the scientific world during the early 20th century. Bohr was the first to explain how atoms were structured. In the artwork “Kick it”, visitors themselves can initiate a reaction where light jumps from ball to ball. The orbs of light move, like an image of how electrons revolve around the nucleus of an atom. Niels Bohr was also a passionate football player and goalkeeper for his home team in Copenhagen. In 1922 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics.
At Charles Xll Square, you will be able to kick glowing orbs into action. Photo: Limelight
At Benny Fredrikssons Torg (a street behind Kulturhuset), lighting designer Irina My Ahrenstedt has collaborated with an elementary school in Stockholm’s Södermalm district. Nearly a hundred ten-year-olds have created kaleidoscopes that will be projected onto one of the building walls. This artwork was inspired by a Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, Ragnar Granit (1967), who researched how the eye perceives colours, and by physics laureate Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1930), who studied the diffraction of light according to the so-called Raman effect.
The Stockholm Cathedral will display an artwork inspired by literature laureate Tomas Tranströmer’s poetry collection “The Sorrow Gondola”. Designer and light artist Ivan Wahren will let a green-blue shimmering light meander down the high tower of the cathedral.
Sixty guided tours in six languages will be offered during the light festival.
Locations with artistic light installations
Benny Fredrikssons torg, the Centralbron bridge, the Grand Hôtel, Gustav Adolfs torg (the square in front of the Royal Opera), Charles XII Square (a park behind the Opera), the Nobel Prize Museum, Sergels torg (a central square), the Swedish Museum of Performing Arts, Skeppsholmen (an island near the city centre), Soltorget (a square above Sergels torg), the City Hall, the City Museum, Storkyrkan (Stockholm Cathedral), Strömparterren and the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.
Participating artists and lighting designers
Atelier BK, Chevalvert, Irina My Ahrenstedt, Ivan Wahren, Juan Funentes, Light Spray, Limelight, Lucion Média, Miguel Chevalier, Rethread, Studio Toer, Theaterpixels and Valentine Isaeus-Berlin as well as several universities and colleges.