Project: Perceptual Ecologies "Mine"
Year: 2010Category: Responsive Art
Exhibition: Port 20:10
Production: Tingbæk Limestone Mines, Denmark
Approach: Interactive Art / Sound & Light Installation
Support: The Danish Art Council
What happens when architecture begins to listen and respond to the people inhabiting it?
Deep inside the abandoned limestone caverns of Thingbæk, Denmark, MINE transformed an underground landscape into a living environment of light, sound and interaction.
Created for the international art festival PORT 2010, the site-specific installation explored how architecture, music and technology could merge into a responsive sensory experience.
The exhibition unfolded through three distinct environments — streams of air, sound and information. Rather than simply observing the artwork, visitors became part of its evolving composition. Their presence and interaction influenced the sound and light, creating atmospheres that were continuously changing.
Designing Living Atmospheres
MINE explored the idea of Perceptual Ecologies: environments in which people, technology and architecture exist in a continuous relationship, influencing and responding to one another.
The project brought together artistic experimentation, spatial design, interactive technology and musical composition to investigate an alternative understanding of architecture — not as a static container, but as a living, responsive experience.
This early exploration of atmospheres and human perception continues to inform Esben Bala Skouboe's work across art, architecture and healthcare design.
The artistic concepts and technical principles behind MINE were later published in Worldmaking as Techné: Participatory Art, Music and Architecture (Riverside Architectural Press, 2018), in a chapter by Daniel Overholt and Esben Bala Skouboe.
