The Ephemeral Lake (2024)
LIVE SIMULATION, GENERATIVE SOUND & INTERACTIVE GLASS SCULPTURE
The Ephemeral Lake is a living instrument where life emerges and vanishes within a real-time simulated world and generative musical composition. The artwork sings and continuously transforms from environmental to inner mental worlds, and through its real-time simulation every user experience is never the same.
Originally commissioned by the Hamburger Kunsthalle as part of the anniversary birthday celebrations for Caspar David Friedrich, it was born from Steensen’s ecological fieldwork to California’s Mojave Desert during the Winter of 2023, and explores temporary bodies of water only possible via unique climatic conditions. In geology, the concept of an "ephemeral lake" is used to study aquatic ecosystems appearing a few times a century within arid landscapes. Those within the Mojave sit within a network of ancient waterway systems and The Ephemeral Lake is heavily inspired from Lake Manly specifically.
Digitally built using Steensen’s original fieldwork research (recordings, scans, photographs etc.), The Ephemeral Lake’s virtual choreography controls a generative musical composition created by experimental sound artist Okkyung Lee and composer Lugh O'Neil, continuing Steensen’s exploration into musical collaboration. This composition also influences a series of 3D printed interactive glass light sculptures; their physical form directly based on enlarged scans of a rock needle formed of tufa from the Mojave. Their light frequency consistently responds to The Ephemeral Lake’s song that is in turn influenced by its simulated world, and algorithmically sped up so audiences can experience this natural phenomenon through night and day, drought and floodplain, life and death.
EXHIBITIONS
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan
Feb 13 — Jun 8, 2025. MACHINE LOVE: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art.
Visual simulation on LED screen.
Read more on mori.art.museum.
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany
Apr 12 — Oct 27, 2025
Multiple screens with complimenting sculptural elements, and corresponding concept sketches by Steensen.
Read more at hamburger-kunsthalle.de
PUBLICATIONS
The Ephemeral Lake Publication
Released in 2024 via Distanzverlag
Edited by Ulrich Schrauth, Liz Stumpf for the Hamburger Kunsthalle
Purchase via distanz.de ↗
CREDITS
Artist and Creator: Jakob Kudsk Steensen
Co-Producer: Elizabeth Kircher
Curator: Ulrich Schrauth
Experimental Sound Artist: Okkyung Lee
Music Composition: Lugh O’Neill
3D Development and Design: Jakob Kudsk Steensen & Erratic Animist Studio
Technical Manager: Wouter Weynants
Installation Producer: Andrea Familari
Project Producer/Studio Management: Alex Boyes
Sponsored by: Freunde der Kunsthalle e.V., Deutsche Bank, Fürst Bismarck, Danish Arts Foundation, Rudolf Augstein Stiftung, Behörde für Kultur und Medien