ÆTHER — Marx-Engels-Forum

ÆTHER lets visitors literally immerse themselves in light. Sheets and beams of coloured light are drawn through fog until they become tangible: walls, tunnels and floating shapes that people walk into, touch and photograph from inside. Spherical sound rounds off the experience.

RE:SORB brought the Marx-Engels-Forum back into the Festival of Lights Berlin in 2023 with ÆTHER’s first Berlin showing, then titled ‘Lumisphere’. The festival’s 2024 programme presented its return to the square as the comeback of one of the previous year’s visitor highlights. The photographs on this page come from both years.

ÆTHER tours. It has been shown at Boom Festival in Portugal in 2022 and 2023, at the Festival of Lights Berlin in 2023 (as ‘Lumisphere’) and 2024, at the Bucht der Träumer festival in 2022 and 2024, at Re:birth Festival in Japan in 2024 and at Ramadan at Hafeet in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, in 2023. It builds on RE:SORB’s ongoing research into holographic spaces made from nothing but air, water and light — see also ‘Depth/100’.

ÆTHER is one of a family of holographic lightfields RE:SORB developed itself, alongside BEYOND, Depth/100 and Tessellation. The method builds three-dimensional form in mid-air out of layered fog and volumetric light, rather than projecting an image onto a surface. There are no headsets, no glasses and no LED screens.