This year, for the first time, L’Auditori de Barcelona will be taking part in the Llum BCN festival with the Signes installation created by the Playmodes studio. The piece can be seen in the Llanterna at L’Auditori, the great glass cube designed by Rafael Moneo containing murals by Pablo Palazuelo, which was completely restored during the summer of 2022.

This year’s Llum BCN will run from 3 to 5 February. The festival, curated by Maria Güell Ordis, Oriol Pastor and José Luis de Vicente, has become a top European light art event. An established highlight in the city’s cultural calendar, the twelfth edition features a programme covering a wide range of disciplines: contemporary art, design, architecture, technology and lighting. It is a collective experiment in perception and participation, taking place in an urban laboratory and designed for exploring, contemplating and inhabiting the space we share in the city from original perspectives.

The installation designed by Playmodes for L’Auditori is a reflection of how an urban work of art sometimes becomes so well integrated into its surroundings that it disappears. The giant hanging lantern at L’Auditori de Barcelona is a case in point. This technically complex, subtle creation is the work of architect Rafael Moneo. The lantern also provides a gigantic translucid canvas for the abstract mural by Pablo Palazuelo. However, few visitors to L’Auditori or passers-by engage with this feature.

Signes, created by the Playmodes studio, seeks to establish a dialogue with this space, which dates from 1999 and was recently restored, and its graphic concept. It is intended to give the work a new significance with an installation using kinetic light and sound, consisting of a series of motorised lamps that create a constantly evolving immersive space. An infinite number of moving graphic patterns generated by algorithms emerge from this light system, offering observers a new experience every time they look at it. Light and movement become atmospheric sound landscapes, linking angles, speed and colours to timbres, tempos and harmonies.