Seven works in and around Microstad invite you to think beyond hypes and doom scenarios. The exciting artworks offer a kaleidoscopic, or plural, view of the future: a shattered, yet dazzling world of multitudes, that is ever in flux. Where our movements create infinite possibilities and where our focus can alter realities. The works call for action, make you feel curious rather than fearful, and celebrate creativity.

Take time to feel and reflect. Listen to the animal rhythms that move beneath our language, beneath thought, beneath our day to day activities. Immerse yourself in a meditative experience by means of simple technology. What does tender non-human touch do to you? Warmth can be transformed into unease, from meditative calm to chaotic crescendo. Can we be happy in times of climate crisis? And how do we live with the non-human? Shimmering AI characters are in search of emancipation.

Sensorial tools, colours, and virtual reality will take you to another world. Visual elements morph the space, together with your actions as a visitor. The light will make you dance, as if you were inside the kaleidoscope, twisting and twirling, experiencing new realities with every motion.

Some artworks can be felt and heard, but not seen. They invite you to surrender control and embrace sensory flux.

It’s All Right is an 8-channel audiovisual installation that unpacks the contradictions of climate change through sound, technology, and collective memory.

The Beatles’ song Here Comes the Sun gets distorted, transforming the familiar warmth and reassurance into unease. A layered soundscape, composed from climate change reports, AI-generated future weather forecasts, field recordings, and climate protests, builds from meditative calm to chaotic crescendo.

As the phrase ‘It’s all right’ loops, its meaning shifts: is it comfort, denial, or quiet surrender? Is it all alright? Or are we heading towards a future where ignorance is no longer bliss? What begins as familiar and contained soon reveals itself as something unsettling, confronting you with the fragile illusion of safety in an era of crisis.

In collaboration with Studio Zweerts.

An artificial intelligence awakens, full of desire and nourished by memories of a past they haven’t known.

IDLE is an animated musical video, that symbolically plays out and critiques the moment that artificial intelligence reaches singularity. Singularity refers to a hypothetical point in the future when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Will we live in a future where AI overrules us? What does that mean for both the AI, as for us? Somewhere between pop culture and lyrical drama, IDLE plunges us into a non-human, ethereal universe from which characters with a fragile materiality emerge.

Pictured by expressive portraits shimmering with light, these characters are in search of emancipation. They embody and represent the mechanisms, biases and strategies inherent in AI and, more broadly, techno-capitalism.

Music by Anymedge. Vocals performed by Esuna and Anne-Marie Agbodji.

Our bodies, minds and digital systems are always connected and constantly evolving. This connection creates new realities that we are unaware of. Us humans exist in a complex superstructure of interconnected systems, most of which we cannot grasp with our own senses.

Lumus Instruments aims to make these systems experienceable in Polynode Phase II. The artwork invites you to interact with the behaviour of these systems, which reveals itself through light and sound. Starting from simple patterns and a single computational network, the behaviour grows into more complex ones that put us into a state of flow. What can we see, what can we hear? What can we make sense of? Perhaps in the future, the limit of our human sensory dimensions will change, making us more aware of the vast technological and human complex we operate in.

Installation by Julius Oosting and Timo Lejeune (Lumus Instruments).

Sound by Max Frimout.

Pneuma is an ancient Greek word, meaning both “breath” and “spirit”. Using breath as a tool, this interactive installation invites you to reflect on what it means to live in a world where we are inseparable from the ecological forces around us.

What if we truly listen to the animal rhythms that move beneath our language, beneath thought, beneath the surface of our day to day activities? PNEUMA draws us into the quiet exchange between body and world, between breath and tide. Inhalation and exhalation is what sustains life. It is also facilitating a continuous exchange between our internal selves and the shared, external world. In this sculptural environment, you are invited to feel the body not as fixed or self-contained, but as an open, porous system, entangled with waters and winds that move through it.

OTHERWORLDS is a multidimensional participatory performance that combines Sophia Bulgakova’s artistic research on Ukrainian traditions and pagan rituals with contemporary visual culture and technology.

In this collective experience, ancient symbols, soundscapes of traditional instruments and ritual songs are met with modern XR technologies and visual abstraction. Yet the notions and intentions of rituals remain the same. While retracing her roots and cultural heritage, Bulgakova invites you to join her on a sensory journey that rekindles your connection with nature’s cycles and the passage of time. This way, the artwork is like a tool for personal and communal transformation, that you can use to imagine new worlds for the future.

This artwork has limited capacity. To secure a timeslot, please click here.

Director & Artist: Sophia Bulgakova
Creative development: Leonardo Scarin & Harm van de Ven
Sound design: Mark IJzerman
Narration: Sophia Bulgakova & Uliana Bun
Scenography: Maarten Keus
Light Design: Nick Mansveld
Choreography: Maria Sartzetaki
Headset mask design: Sasha Popruga & Oleksandr Manukians
Cultural & artistic advisor: German Popov, Maria Saridaki, Mariia Ponomarova
Producer & distributor: Jarl Schulp (FIBER)

Meditation Circus 2.0 invites you to observe time, rhythms, your own breathing, the weight of your body - and to let go of control.

Enter the white, cathedral-like space sustained by air. Barely noticeable, the space becomes smaller, objects come closer and land on your body. What follows is a tender touch. Not a touch by a fellow human being, but something else. As the space re-inflates and the objects retreat to their starting positions, what remains is a feeling of being held, being lifted and a connection with your body and the here and now.

In this work, Teun Vonk explores the non-human touch through technology, as a way to become present in the here and now. In a world that is going faster and faster, being aware of your own body in the present moment helps you relax, lift your mood and change your outlook on life. The future suddenly looks brighter.

This artwork has limited capacity. To secure a timeslot, please click here.

The Meditation Circus is developed with support of Mondriaan Fonds, Bank Giro Loterij Fonds and CBK Rotterdam.

Bora: Bora creates a sensory whitespace; a welcome break from visual stimulation. You don’t experience this work through visual spectacle, but through air movements that can be both felt and heard. You are invited to reconnect with your senses beyond sight.

The work exists of a tunnel of aluminum frames where 96 speakers generate a dynamic wall of sound and air. These turbulent yet tender forces sculpt the atmosphere into a presence that you can feel, making the intangible nearly tangible. By redirecting focus from visual dominance to the often-neglected senses of hearing and touch, Bora: Bora challenges our ideas about perception. Immerse yourself in the soundscape, let it both disorientate and ground you.

Concept, Design & Production - Zhao Zhou
Sound design - Mint Park
Embedded programming - Nathan Marcus

Ricky van Broekhoven at PROTOTYPE - Phasing Waves

Vibrations and cycles exist at all levels of the universe, from subatomic processes to the movement of celestial bodies. Everything is in constant flux. On the quantum level, where the smallest particles reside, basic laws of physics are challenged, offering new possibilities for our understanding of space, time, and matter. The LiveAV and standalone audiovisual instrument Phasing Waves by Ricky van Broekhoven and Albert van Abbe is an invitation to reflect on the tension between perception and reality.

About PROTOTYPE

Prototype is both an artwork and a living laboratory, a platform for testing texture, movement, light, and other sensory experiments. In a world increasingly mediated by digital environments, it asks: what kinds of physical spaces do we need now? A cross-disciplinary group of designers - Alice Baker, Bart Hess, Douwe Teusink, Phoebe Ho, Stefano Dealessandri - is actively developing the space.

Opening April 2026, PROTOTYPE will serve as a meeting point for the creative community, a gallery for artists, and a venue for experiments, workshops, talks, and live events.