Löhnberger Mühle, Lahnstein — rheinleuchten 2021

For rheinleuchten 2021, the fourth edition of the light art festival run by the Zweckverband Welterbe Oberes Mittelrheintal, RE:SORB created the show at the festival’s main venue: the Löhnberger Mühle in Lahnstein, where the Lahn meets the Rhine in the UNESCO World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley. From 22 to 26 September, each night from dusk until midnight, the empty mill site became a route of light, projection and sound.

The mill stands on the bank of the Rhine in Niederlahnstein. Its six-storey main building, a château-like brick building from the early 1890s, is a listed monument. After its years as a mill the site was used to store and transship grain; rheinleuchten 2021 opened the mill’s gates to visitors for the first time.

The Zweckverband had called an artistic competition for a scenographic concept for the mill; RE:SORB was commissioned to create a multimedia time machine in nine stations, in which the boundaries between reality and dream disappear.

Visitors were led first through the interior, where light installations and projected rooms opened up the architecture of the 19th-century mill. Outside, a light and audio show turned the large façade into a multimedia journey through time.

The mapping surface is the brick façade itself. The content is cut to its geometry: because the animation follows the real edges and openings of the walls, the architecture appears to move rather than carry a flat picture.

An immersive sound design belongs to the work alongside the projection. Interior and façade are conceived as one environment rather than two separate shows — the holistic sensory environment the studio has developed further in Berlin and Bengaluru since.