Design projects & workshops
Where visual, tactile, spatial, interactive and performative aspects meet and merge over time
Design projects & workshops
Where visual, tactile, spatial, interactive and performative aspects meet and merge over time
Nice you found me
Freelance Designer & Artist (MFA) • Based in Copenhagen • Freelance since 1996 • Part time Associate Professor at The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design & Conservation • I design and deliver animation & motion graphics for online use & video projections for opera-, dance- and theatre performances • I do concept and spatial design for light festivals, scenography and exhibitions, as well as concept design for games • Also, I did some research and published some articles
Nice you found me
Freelance Designer & Artist (MFA) • Based in Copenhagen • Freelance since 1996 • Part time Associate Professor at The Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design & Conservation • I design and deliver animation & motion graphics for online use & video projections for opera-, dance- and theatre performances • I do concept and spatial design for light festivals, scenography and exhibitions, as well as concept design for games • Also, I did some research and published some articles
Recent projects
CUMULU3
An interactive dual-user on-water light installation at the Copenhagen Light Festival 2025

In action – various colours when giving air together
CUMULU3 invites audience to participate in sharing their air to collectively blow multi-coloured animated bubble rings that come alive and grow and glow on the water surface.
See a short instagram movie here
Idé and execution: Arthur Maria Steijn • Creative development: Frederik Lauenborg
Thank you for your support and help: GF Ørestad (financial support), Copenhagen Light Festival, Theo Bjerg Steijn & Asbjørn

Interactive input with propeller for giving air

Different animated colours when blowing together

Interacting while there was ice on the water

Seen from the bridge with ice on the water
90-ILLUMINI
A light project test at my academy in Copenhagen – a large digit display for writing text in customisable colour, variations and speed – seen from the outside

Close-up

Total at night

Total in daylight
The digit display is driven by an Arduino with a SD card that can be loaded with a text in csv format. RGB-colour, speed, and colour-noise can be adjusted with knobs. Ultimately we like to have 6 digits, one for each window in the room.
Idé, electronics & execution: Arthur Maria Steijn • Creative development: Frederik Lauenborg
Thank you for your support: The Royal Academy, Anders Thulin
A-RE (Arti REspiratio)
An interactive luminous underwater creature at the Copenhagen Light Festival winter 2024 & at Aarhus Festuge in the summer of 2024

Breath here

Give warm breath to A-RE

A-RE receiving breath and changing colour
Arti Respiratio (A-RE), is an interactive luminous underwater creature, a kind of jellyfish. A-RE is not doing well in the cold Danish waters and needs the audience’s warm breath to get its colors and pulse back. The Gulf Stream has brought it here from its habitat, one of the world’s warm oceans.
A-RE is a tech-trash creature that has created itself by combining and assembling redundant and discarded electronics and technology that have been thrown into the oceans.
See a short instagram movie here
Idé and execution: Arthur Maria Steijn • Creative development: Frederik Lauenborg
Thank you for your support and help in Copenhagen: Christianshavns Lokaludvalg, Copenhagen Light Festival, Poul Andersen, Simon Christensen, Theo Bjerg Steijn
In Aarhus: Micha Schaarup, Ida Lundø and the beautiful people at Aarhus Festuge

A-RE alive underwater

Photo: CPH Light Festival

Photo: Maria Schelling Minard

At Aarhus Festuge, summer 2024

At Aarhus Festuge

In Copenhagen with windy weather

Warmer colour at windy weather

Construction sketch

Lowering into the water
Mother of Mermaids
Underwater Animated Light Installation for OPLYST festival in Hundested, Denmark 2024

Mother tail in movement

Mermaid swimming away
Mother of Mermaids is an animated light installation located below the water surface in Hundested Harbour, with mythical maritime references to the time when sailors set sail on short and longer voyages. Adventurous journeys where the sight of the beautiful sea and beautiful skies were alternated with feelings of loneliness, lack of love and fantasies about what hidden beauty must be under the surface of the sea. The work is a tale of life and death, recreating the story of fantastic, beautiful, life-threatening and impossible love.
The installation expresses the fantastic in the form of light in motion that illuminates underwater as well as the fear of what actually hides beneath the surface of the water. The light is animated, and thus not constantly visible, so it is experienced as luminous and moving shapes that come into view in the evening in the dark water. See more here …
More on OPLYST can be found here …
In 2023 a smaller version was presented at the Kyndelmisse Køge Lysfest og Kulturnat 2023

Mother tail in movement

Mermaid swimming away

Test setup in my garden

Mother in wilder waters
Midt om Natten
Animation & video graphics for large LED screen filling the background space behind the set-pieces.
For the musical based on Kim Larsens words and music – shows in Sweden, 2024 https://mittomnatten.se, after big succes and many shows in Denmark. See more here …




City Museum Exhibition Concept and Design
For Møntergården, the cultural history museum in Odense, Denmark
Concept art for a new exhibition for the cultural history museum in Odense, Denmark. Fantasy and mythology are explored through stories on past, present and future related to the power, technology and culture that is connected to the city of Odense.
In collaboration with Have Kommunication & PR and Jakob Ion Wille



Solur (Sundail)
In between sunlight and time
A unique sundial designed for just your place. Created for a geographical position, with exact longitude and latitude. These handmade and customized sundials are soon available for online sale in Denmark at www.solur.dk and in Holland at www.zonnewijzer-design.nl



FLASH-FORWARD: Storyworld, Interaction and Speculative Design
Artistic research project at the Royal Danish Academy
A 3-week workshop in storyword building, interaction and speculative design that resulted in interactive prototypes at an exhibition in November 2020.
For the project FLASH-FORWARD Graphical Communication Design (MA) students created spatial images of possible future worlds. What will the future look like in the light of present problems such as climate change, democratic crisis, sustainability, data control etc?
You can see more here, on the Royal Danish Academy’s website.
Idea and execution: Arthur Maria Steijn & Jakob Ion Wille
Guest speakers: Kirsten Astrup, Michael Valeur, Jakob Thorbek, Natalie Koerner, Martin Sønderlev Christensen, Mikael Fock, Oscar Stockholm
Methods and results of FLASH-FORWARD: Storyworld, Interaction and Speculative Design
are presented by Jakob Ion Wille & Arthur Steijn at:
IMAGINING THE IMPOSSIBLE
UTOPIA & DYSTOPIA CONFERENCE
Conference on the Fantastic in Media Entertainment, May 27-29, 2021 (Extended date)