Moesgaard Museum

Light and shadows

Johan Ahrenfeldt works closely with the museum's lighting designers, media designers, and external sound designer to make light, sound and image merge into a whole that supports the vision of the exhibition architect.

´It's about choosing the right technologies´, says lighting designer Lasse Ugilt Sø: 
– We rarely project on conventional screens, but actively use the materiality of making moving images on parts of the set. Image and set design must merge to be magical, and this is done in close collaboration between the set designer, the media designer, and us lighting people. For example, in 'RUS - Vikings in the East' we have an interactive media production on part of a large wall print. Here, everything must play for everything to melt together and the story to come alive.

Light and image work together, and the projection is adjusted live by the media designer so that colours, angles, etc. play together. The media designer also creates the content for the projection.
According to Lasse Ugilt Sø, the museum's lighting designers work with shadows just like in the theatre world:
– Both in the exhibition space and in the displays, we work as much with the shadows as we do with the light. We use spotlight and practically never create flat ambient light, which illuminates everything equally. The light must create depth in the space.

He is supported by colleague Torbjørn Strandborg Eriksen, who also draws a parallel to the visual arts:
– You take a black room and make focal points, put the light in some stripes that make a movement. Sun streaks on a wall print, for example. It's like the Skagen painters, they just did it with brushstrokes, but it's the same way we work with light and shadow.

The two lighting designers agree that working with light is intuitive. `We can see when it's wrong', they say.