BEYOND — Monumental Water-and-Fog Light Environments

BEYOND is a monumental volumetric light installation by Stefan Ihmig / RE:SORB, presented at Boom Festival in Portugal and O.Z.O.R.A. Festival in Hungary. It brings water, fog, moving imagery and sound into a composition that extends beyond a screen and into the surrounding environment.

Visitors walk into it. There is no proscenium, no stage, no correct viewing point; the piece has no front. As bodies enter and move, the field reforms around them, their silhouettes carve negative space inside the light, and the architecture they are standing in reorganises itself second by second. A generative system drives the field continuously — no two minutes are identical.

Not only layers: a partially filled light volume

BEYOND works with more than the distance between separate transparent screens. Fog also occupies parts of the space between more concentrated image-bearing regions. Its density varies along the direction of projection, creating stronger concentrations, lighter atmospheric filling and relatively clear intervals.

These differences are central to the spatial experience. Projected forms can appear concentrated in one region, dissolve into a less defined luminous volume, and emerge again farther into the environment. Layering and partial filling belong to the same composition.

The projection medium is therefore not simply a surface receiving an image. Its distribution helps shape where the image becomes visible, how it extends into depth and where it opens into darkness.

Development from Boom Festival 2023

At Boom Festival in 2023, Ihmig realised a multilayer waterscreen installation. Building on that experience, he found that a fog region positioned farther behind a waterscreen could carry projected imagery with a perceived quality comparable to an additional water surface.

This observation offered an alternative to repeatedly installing complete waterscreen systems. In the subsequent hybrid configuration, water provides a more defined image-bearing region while fog extends the composition deeper into the site.

The practical substitution also changes the artistic possibilities. Fog need not remain another thin plane; its non-uniform density allows image-bearing concentrations and partially illuminated volumes to coexist. The atmosphere becomes a compositional material.

Light at landscape scale

In Ihmig’s account of the large outdoor configurations, the three-dimensional light experience extends approximately 100 metres into space. The extent and appearance depend on the site, projection arrangement and atmospheric conditions; this describes the depth of the light environment rather than the dimensions of one screen.

BEYOND develops through different site-specific configurations rather than a fixed screen arrangement. Moving imagery, concentrated light, translucent transitions and open intervals create a spatial work whose apparent immateriality contrasts with the physical distance it occupies.

Artist and presentation record

Artist / studio: Stefan Ihmig / RE:SORB. Media: projected imagery, waterscreens, fog and sound; the configuration varies by presentation. Outdoor presentations: Boom Festival, Portugal; O.Z.O.R.A. Festival, Hungary. Development milestone: the multilayer waterscreen installation at Boom Festival 2023, followed by the hybrid water-and-fog approach.

BEYOND has also been presented at Sanctum of Sound, MaHalla, Berlin — a separate indoor presentation whose materials and geometry differ from the outdoor installations.

Rather than only projecting an image onto a surface, BEYOND makes atmosphere part of the image.

Credits

• Concept, direction and method: Stefan Ihmig
• Production: RE:SORB