Rising

Mouawad + Laurier · 2022 – 2025 · Nuit Blanche Paris, Llum BCN, MIRA, La Rochelle, Aveiro

Our role Concept, design, light and LEDs, sound, electronics, touring.

An outdoor light and sound installation about our vulnerability. It turns the scientific data of sea level rise into a sensory experience: waves of light rise and flood the space in real time, like sunlight reflected on the sea.

The piece is linked live to oceanographic data from the University of La Rochelle. The stronger the climate anomalies, the more intense the experience becomes. Rising breaks the taboo of the future that awaits us, pushes fear away and uses beauty to make us more resilient.

We designed the work for touring. Five waterproof lamps, hand-blown at the NasonMoretti glassworks in Murano, each hold LEDs, a motor and loudspeakers, powered by a single Ethernet cable. Their caustic light fills a 20 × 20 m space on a 7-minute loop. Three hours on battery, four to six hours to set up, on a façade or on the ground. A motorised version makes the whole space breathe like an ocean.

Rising is part of the H2O series, our long-term research on water, climate and the living, and extends Retour aux Sources. Pierre Schaeffer Prize from the Scam in 2023. Public talk at Nuit Blanche 2024 with hydrologist Emma Haziza.

To programme this artwork: mouawadlaurier.com

Credits

Artists Mouawad + Laurier
Music Cyril Laurier, Louis Raveton
Technical design and software Hand Coded
Lamps NasonMoretti, Murano; Salvador Mauri
Scientific collaboration University of La Rochelle (oceanographic data), Learning Planet Institute, La Scam

Tour

MIRA Festival, Barcelona, 2025
Llum BCN, L’Auditori, Barcelona, 2025
Nuit Blanche, Learning Planet Institute, Paris, 2024
Eufonic, La Ràpita, 2023, threatened symbolic sites
Zero1, La Rochelle, 2022
Festival dos Canais, Aveiro, 2022

Awards

Pierre Schaeffer Prize, Brouillon d’un Rêve, Scam, 2023

Talks

Hub Montréal, 2025: the H2O series and the Venice Biennale project
Nuit Blanche, Paris, 2024: the ocean and climate change, with hydrologist Emma Haziza, Learning Planet Institute