25 July 2025 | Photo: Playmodes Studio
Into the Light – L’Expo runs until 31 August with BEYOND as its immersive threshold
BEYOND by Barcelona-based audiovisual duo Playmodes has found renewed life as the gateway installation for Into the Light – L’Expo. The work, a 35-metre-long tunnel composed of synchronised light and sound, serves as the exhibition’s entry point, immersing visitors in a sensory landscape where opposing forces collide: inside and outside, shadow and light, presence and absence.
Eloi Maduell and Santi Vilanova, the creative minds behind Playmodes, revisit BEYOND, first unveiled during the New Media programme at EC Special 2021, a special edition of Romania’s Electric Castle festival in Cluj, within a new curatorial context.
Known for their innovative use of technology and spatial storytelling, the duo transforms transitional spaces into performative experiences. In Into the Light, BEYOND becomes a conceptual overture to the entire exhibition, setting a tone of contrast, movement and transformation.
Blending precision programming with artistic intuition, BEYOND invites viewers to navigate a liminal zone where architecture, light and sound converge into a single narrative environment. As with many of Playmodes’ works, the installation dissolves the boundaries between medium and message, allowing space itself to function as a vehicle for emotion and meaning.
Widely recognised for their commitment to open-source tools, creative coding and the fusion of scientific precision with artistic expression, Playmodes have presented their work at leading international festivals including Sónar in Barcelona, MUTEK in Montreal, Ars Electronica in Linz, LEV in Spain and Scopitone in France. Their practice consistently explores the thresholds of perception, using custom-built systems to shape space and time through audiovisual language.
Hosted at Grande Halle de La Villette in Paris from 9 April to 31 August 2025, Into the Light – L’Expo brings together pioneering works from global artists exploring light, motion and interactivity as tools for sensory transformation.
