LYSERGIC
SÓL  // case study
2026 · in production← back to field
Sól at full awakening — a circle of dancers around a giant wooden hand holding a glowing orb, an audience seated in a ring, spotlights cutting through haze at night.
Case study · participatory light ritual

SÓL

A sun that needs a circle of dancers to wake.

Where Het Landjuweel · Ruigoord · NL When July 2026 Discipline Installation · ritual · sound
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The premise

The ritual is the interface.

A three-metre wooden hand rises from a sandy crater. In its palm, a two-metre orb breathes slowly — red, almost asleep. It only wakes when people gather and dance around it. There is no button, no screen, no instruction card. To turn Sól on, a crowd has to become a circle.

Two wide-angle cameras read the shape of that motion and feed it into a live TouchDesigner patch. The more the circle moves together, the further Sól climbs out of sleep — from a dim red pulse toward a warm white sun throwing beams through the haze. Stop dancing, and it slips back under. The crowd is the switch, the dimmer and the score all at once.

Pencil etching of the Sól opening ritual — dancers in a circle holding hands around the lit hand at dusk, an audience watching, a wind turbine on the horizon.
fig. 01 — opening-ritual studyetching · 2026
Behaviour

States of the object

Sól has no on/off. It has moods — a slow gradient the crowd walks it through and back again, all night, for each new group that forms.

  1. Dormant A slow six-second red pulse. Visible across the field, but not yet on. A held breath.
  2. Stirring Cameras read the first motion. As bodies begin to dance, Sól shifts from red toward amber.
  3. Fully awake A complete circle, moving together. Warm white light, beams through haze — the hand is holding a small sun.
  4. Fading When the dancing stops, Sól returns to sleep over thirty seconds. Ready for the next group to wake it.
"The ritual is the instruction manual. The instruction manual is the ritual."
— Lysergic doctrine · tenet 01
How it's built

Scavenged wood, addressable light, a motion field

3D model of Sól's orb — a geodesic sphere of 42 acrylic panels on a steel frame, with an addressable LED core structure visible inside.
fig. 02 — orb geometry · 42-panel geodesic · LED core
Hand
3 m, scavenged wood · charred & oiled · steel armature
Orb
2 m geodesic acrylic · 42 panels · addressable LED core
Sensing
Two wide-angle cameras → TouchDesigner motion field
Air
Low-output haze drifting from the treeline
Sound
Four speakers · tribal electronic · opening-night only
From the build

Raised by hand, lit from the spine

The bamboo geodesic frame assembled in a garden in daylight — a full sphere of struts and black hub connectors on a timber base, a stepladder alongside.
fig. 03 — geodesic frame · bamboo & hub connectors
The same geodesic frame at night with the addressable LED core spine glowing green through the structure.
fig. 04 — first light · LED core spine
Role
Concept, build & system — Jasper Veldkamp (Lysergic)
Venue
Het Landjuweel · Ruigoord · NL
Stack
TouchDesigner · addressable LED · wide-angle cameras · spatial sound
Status
In production · July 2026

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© Lysergic 2019—26 Sól · Het Landjuweel '26 Amsterdam · Netherlands