Komorebi (2022) is a swarm of artificial creatures that make music in response to the sun, the clouds, and the shadows of trees moving in the wind. Komorebi is a Japanese word meaning “sunlight shining through trees.” We are invited to experience the shadow play produced by the tree canopy on the forest floor as music. The work suggests that “life” is not an exceptional property of organic life forms, but also a property of complex systems reaching beyond biological life as we understand it.

Matteo Marangoni – born in Florence in 1982 – and Dieter Vandoren – born in Belgium in 1981 – met during their studies at the ArtScience Interfaculty in The Hague and are co-founders of instrument inventors initiative (iii). During the last decade they have collaborated on a series of spatial audiovisual works exploring artificial life and embodied swarm intelligence in which digital computation merges seamlessly with the physical world to create spatial sensory experiences which are ephemeral, fragile, and unpredictable. 

Komorebi is developed with the assistance of Daan Johan (PCB design), Riccardo Marogna (DSP programming), Caspar Krijgsman (OTA programming), Mihalis Shammas and Nicolò Merendino (body design), Rafaele Andrade (3D printing prototypes), Luuk Meints and Ionela Pop (horn casting), Willem Werkplaats (CNC milling), and Francesco Di Maggio, Tingyi Jiang, Maria Oosterveen, and Siavash Jafari (assembly).

Komorebi was commissioned by Into the Great Wide Open and produced in partnership with Crossing Parallels and Highlight Festival (TU Delft) with the financial support of the Creative Industries Fund NL and Stichting Stokroos.

Proximity Music: Visceral Acts takes place from 7-9 April. Find out more here.