Project: "Soft Landing" 360° Immersive Experience
Artist Collaboration: Kuu Elina & Oliver Moosus
Location: Krulli Mehaanikatsehh, Tallinn (within Traveling Hedgehog Festival venue)
Duration: 2 nights at festival + 3 additional weeks for corporate event
Capacity: 150-200 simultaneous visitors
My Role: Co-Creator, lighting & set designer, technical designer
Artist Collaboration: Kuu Elina & Oliver Moosus
Location: Krulli Mehaanikatsehh, Tallinn (within Traveling Hedgehog Festival venue)
Duration: 2 nights at festival + 3 additional weeks for corporate event
Capacity: 150-200 simultaneous visitors
My Role: Co-Creator, lighting & set designer, technical designer
About six months before Traveling Hedgehog Festival, artist Kuu Elina approached me with a concept: create an immersive visual and aural sanctuary where festival-goers could disconnect from the party's intensity and experience introspection through light and sound.
We wanted to transport people to another place in space and time—a meditative environment that felt neither like a festival nor like reality, but somewhere suspended between.
Unlike the high-energy main stage, Soft Landing would be a refuge. A 360-degree sensory experience where visitors could lie on beanbags, close their eyes, and drift through carefully curated soundscapes and responsive lighting.
Designing the Void
To achieve complete immersion, we needed to eliminate all reference points—no visible walls, floor boundaries, or ceiling edges. The space needed to feel infinite.
I designed a 10-meter cube (10m x 10m x 10m interior) constructed entirely from scaffolding. We wrapped every interior surface—walls, floor, and ceiling—in black molton fabric, creating a seamless void where spatial boundaries dissolved.
Visitors entered through a custom-designed tunnel lined with LED lighting that pulsed gently, filled with low-lying fog. This transition space prepared them psychologically, signaling they were leaving the festival and entering somewhere else entirely.
At the heart of the black void floated a three-dimensional LED array—a volumetric light sculpture, acting as the installation's main focal point.
Three Layers of Movement
Layer 1: 3D Volumetric LED Matrix
A custom-built array of individually addressable LEDs arranged in three-dimensional space, creating depth and impossible geometries through pixel animation.
A custom-built array of individually addressable LEDs arranged in three-dimensional space, creating depth and impossible geometries through pixel animation.
Layer 2: 16 Vertical Dancing Tubes
Two-meter LED tubes mounted on DMX-controlled winches, programmed to rise and fall in response to music. These vertical elements added kinetic movement, making the light sculpture literally breathe and dance.
Two-meter LED tubes mounted on DMX-controlled winches, programmed to rise and fall in response to music. These vertical elements added kinetic movement, making the light sculpture literally breathe and dance.
Layer 3: 16 Radial Light Rays
Three-meter pixel-controlled LED tubes arranged like sun rays emanating from the center, creating radial symmetry that drew the eye inward while suggesting infinite expansion.
Three-meter pixel-controlled LED tubes arranged like sun rays emanating from the center, creating radial symmetry that drew the eye inward while suggesting infinite expansion.
The result: a constantly evolving light sculpture that appeared to float, pulse, and transform within the black void.
The Technical Challenge
This installation required 42 universes of pixel control—a scale fairly uncommon for an installation of this type in Estonia. I designed a custom advanced output patch in Resolume Arena allowing real-time manipulation of thousands of individual pixels across three layers of fixtures.
The Krulli Mehaanikatsehh hall had no overhead rigging points fitting for us, so we engineered a self-supporting roof structure integrated into the scaffolding cube, creating safe hanging points for the central volumetric array and winched tubes without relying on the building's structure.
The 16 DMX-controlled winches had to move smoothly and safely while carrying LED tubes. I programmed movement patterns that felt organic—slow ascents during ambient passages, synchronized drops during musical peaks—always maintaining safe clearances above visitors lying on the floor.
Soft Landing operated on a separate budget from the main festival because it was designed to remain installed for three additional weeks, serving as an experience at a large corporate event following Traveling Hedgehog.
Reception
"I've never seen anything like this in Estonia—or anywhere nearby. This belongs in a major international festival." — Festival attendee
Soft Landing became one of the most talked-about elements of Traveling Hedgehog 2025. Visitors described it as transformative, with many returning multiple times across both festival nights.
Kuu Elina and I succeeded in creating exactly what we envisioned: a space that existed outside of time, where festival-goers could decompress, reflect, and experience something beyond typical event entertainment.
Soft Landing isn't typical event lighting. It's about atmosphere, introspection, using light as sculpture rather than spectacle. It demonstrates my range beyond conventional event lighting into experiential art and installation work.
Immersive installation design?
I collaborate with artists and organizations to create experiential lighting installations that go beyond traditional event production. From concept development through technical execution, I design environments where light becomes art.
