From laboratory to gallery: the LUMSON project

Initiated by artist Aernoudt Jacobs and iMAL, this project is a unique collaboration between IUMAT, FARI, and De Hoge Rielen. Together, the partners are developing a collective and artistic framework exploring inaudible frequencies, voices, sound synthesis and AI. Central to our institute's contribution is the fundamental materials research into a flexible, luminescent loudspeaker film.

During these workshops, participants gain unique insight into the layered structure and composition of the flexible film. Because the loudspeaker takes the form of a flat foil, it enables a highly innovative approach to sound, perception, and form. Participants are encouraged to create unique designs to broadly explore the interaction between form, movement, light/color, and spatial sound, yielding a rich variety of research results. The experiments and outcomes resulting from these workshops will be contextualized and presented in a collective exhibition following the conclusion of the workshop series.

Our expertise in advanced materials provides the technological foundation for this project. We are responsible for screen-printing the luminescent devices based on electroluminescence. By combining this technique with innovative piezoelectric coatings, we are successfully developing functional, light-emitting loudspeaker foils.

In addition to pure scientific development, knowledge dissemination is a key component of our role within the consortium. To facilitate this, two specialized screen-printing workshops are being hosted at our facility in Diepenbeek.