Lights on the Phyletic Museum

Photo by Marko Schmidt

In the course of planning a space for a client, lighting comes into play at some point. Robert Seidel made light the focal point for the 100th anniversary of the Phyletic Museum, as he and his team created “living paintings” that danced across the exterior of the museum.

Photo by Christian Seeling

Seidel’s website describes the project as follows:

“The projection consists of five “living paintings” which turned the
Phyletic Museum into an architectural canvas. These “tableaux vivants” refer to the accommodated phylogenetic collection which was given to the public by Ernst Haeckel in 1908. Additional inspiration comes from the nearby Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology, where Seidel used to study and which, for instance, researches the locomotion of animals. All these impressions of color, movement and form are combined with his personal artistic research into intertwining primordial structures, whirring micro-surfaces, traces of smeared motion-fragments, nostalgic optical aberrations, pulsating mirage shadows as well as biographical reflections.”