LUMENAURA Artists
We invite you to explore the incredible creativity and talent of the artists who have contributed to Lumenaura 2025. Each installation is a captivating reflection of artistry, designed to illuminate our city and inspire wonder among all who visit.
On this page, you will find bios of the featured artists along with insights into their thought-provoking installations. From dazzling light displays to immersive artistic experiences, each work invites you to engage with it's beauty in a unique way.
Join us in recognizing the visionary artists who bring their passion and creativity to Lumenaura!
Alina Nazmeeva - Invisible Currents
Alina Nazmeeva is a media artist and educator whose work examines the material and cultural implications of technologies. Her work integrates XR, AI, textile, physical installation, digital simulation, and gaming engines as storytelling devices and as sites of critique.
Invisible Currents made its debut on a massive 4,000 sq. meter screen at Tsim Sha Tsui Centre during Hong Kong Art Week! This iteration used digital animation to explore the secret world of signals and communication between flowers and their pollinators, showcasing a vibrant new perspective.
In Aurora, this piece will come to life in a projection mapping format using the shapes and landscapes of our beautiful downtown and turn them into an illuminated garden.
BigArt - The Door(s)
BigArt is built for one purpose – make more public art. BigArt designs, builds and promotes interactive, and immersive, works of wonder to inspire the next. From fire-shooting portals to code-talking cubes from another dimension, BigArt lives for interactive and immersive art installations.
The Door(s)
What does a door mean to you? Does it evoke feelings of opportunity or anxiety? How did a door become such a metaphor for success, failure, opportunity, family, home, change, transition, and so many other moments of emotional connection? This project explores the greater meaning of a door, and its ability to change our path in life when we have the courage to open it. After all, it’s just a door.
Crystal Wagner & Logan Luckey - Lux Arcana
Cashews n' Tattoos is the collaborative studio of artist Crystal Wagner and engineer/designer Logan Luckey, whose work bridges the worlds of art, technology, and design through large-scale sculptural installations and immersive environments. Together, they create works that merge organic form with engineered precision, exploring the intersection of nature, light, and architecture.
Wagner, an internationally exhibited artist known for her monumental site-specific installations and paper sculptures, brings a deep sensitivity to material, form, and ecological imagery. Luckey contributes a background in engineering, custom large-scale outdoor signage fabrication, and interactive systems, designing complex structural and lighting integrations that bring their shared visions to life.
Their collaborative practice thrives on curiosity and innovation—transforming traditional sculptural approaches through digital design, CNC fabrication, and LED technologies. Projects such as Lux Arcana exemplify their shared commitment to creating public works that engage viewers, inviting reflection on the interconnectedness of natural and technological systems.
Based in Colorado, Cashews n' Tattoos operates as both a creative laboratory and fabrication studio, producing dynamic works for galleries, public art programs, and festivals across the country. Their installations celebrate the synthesis of art and science, offering audiences luminous encounters that transform space and inspire wonder.
Suspended in space, Lux Arcana merges art and technology to create a visual experience that captures the wonder of living systems. Inspired by bioluminescence, the sculpture evokes the pulse of natural organisms that generate light as part of their life process. It invites viewers to pause, look closer, and witness light as a vital force—an energy that animates the sculpture. Through its integrated LED system, Lux Arcana interacts with the surrounding architecture, subtly shifting color and intensity to transform the perception of space.
Dan Eller - Echoes of Connection
Dan Eller is an emerging artist based in Chicago’s West Town neighborhood, recognized for his innovative and interactive approach to art. Guided by the belief that art should be more than just observed from a distance, Eller creates works that invite touch, engagement, and exploration. His pieces encourage hands-on interaction, transforming traditional viewing into a dynamic, participatory experience. Eller's work has been featured in galleries and street festivals throughout Chicago and beyond. By blending modern aesthetics with tactile accessibility, he fosters deeper personal connections and leaves viewers with lasting, positive memories.
Echoes of Connection
In an age of digital noise and instant messages, this installation offers a pause—an invitation to connect in a slower, more intentional way. These payphones channel nostalgia and intimacy, using analog-style interfaces to evoke memory, voice, and presence in a modern context.
Fuzzpop Workshop - Threshold
FuzzPop Workshop is a Milwaukee-based art studio creating immersive experiences that make imaginary futures real. Combining sculpture, light, sound, and story, FuzzPop’s large-scale installations and interactive environments are at once experimental and accessible to a broad audience. FuzzPop’s work reflects on our technological and ecological trajectories in ways that cultivate wonder, humility, and joy. Since launching in 2022, FuzzPop has quickly established itself as an exciting new voice in immersive art.
Threshold
Inspired by the flow and movement of water, Threshold explores the boundary between human and environment, interior and exterior, reality and dream. Its scale and form remind us of our relationship to the vast, complex, and often invisible forces surrounding us. As architecture, Threshold creates a liminal space to explore, gather and play.
Ilya Sobol - Mangus
Ilya Sobol is a Los Angeles-based public artist and product design engineer whose work fuses emotional resonance with engineering precision. Diagnosed with ASD and ADHD, he transforms neurodivergence into a superpower — fueling a practice rooted in structure, sensory awareness, and human connection. Technology and engineering are foundations of Ilya’s art journey. He explores function and mechanics to create new meanings and interpretations. Whether crafting a festival installation that responds to color-coded clothing or developing a mechanically adjustable device, his work bridges the technical and the poetic.
Jeff Cason & Brenda Pokorny - Enchanted Oasis
JEFF CASON | ANIMATIONS, MUSIC, LIGHTS
Brenda Pokorny is a mosaic artist inspired by gardens, nature, labyrinths and meditation. She has been creating mosaics for twenty years, from wall-hung art pieces, to signage and architectural installations. Her goal is to beautify spaces both public and private with her colorful mosaics.
Enchanted Oasis is a multi-sensory installation that transforms a fountain walkway into a magical oasis where natural beauty springs to life at your feet.
Combining projected animations, soaring music, and glowing LED lights that shimmer in time to the soundtrack, this installation invites guests to wander along an ever-changing path of flowers, vines, and streams—turning a concrete fountain plaza into a path of enchantment.
Loop - Emergence
Loop is the collaborative artistic partnership of artists Harriet Lumby and Alan Hayes.
Based at their Somerset studio they have established a reputation for creating large scale experiential installations utilising reflections and illusion at the intersection of technology, science and art.
Their playful sculptures invite audiences to be engulfed by intense and thought provoking choreographed audio visual journeys.
Emergence is a place for contemplation. A sanctum within which to consider the dynamic interplay between order and chaos and the momentous role this plays in systems, life, the self, the universe and beyond. Every decision, every idea and in fact every thought comes from this narrow region where the disarray of chaos and the regiment of order endlessly fold into and out of one another. Turbulent and ever changing permutations enabling an imperative blurring of the lines that fosters innovation, creativity, understanding and ‘being’ itself. Emergence theory is a concept that suggests that complex systems and patterns arise from the interactions between simple individual components, rather than being directly attributable to those components themselves. In other words, emergence refers to the appearance of new and unexpected properties and behaviours at the level of a whole system that cannot be predicted by analysing the properties and behaviours of its individual parts. The inside of the individual mirrored nodes of the installation offer surprising and awe inspiring visual illusions that also culminate in an overall combined effect when viewed from a short distance thus creating the emergent system.
Monochronicle Team - Planet Swamp | Laser Show
Iryna Kanishcheva & Charles Alan Rye
Iryna Kanishcheva is a visionary curator and founder of numerous urban art initiatives in the USA and her home country, Ukraine. She is the founder of Monochronicle, a public art network that connects artists with cultural organizations and property owners. With more than a decade of experience and several prestigious awards, Iryna is recognized for advancing urban aesthetics, civic engagement, and equitable artist selection processes.
Charles Alan Rye is a creative director and founder of Energy Science Unlimited with extensive experience in production design, specializing in lighting, sound, lasers, and large-scale video walls. His innovative work—including the acclaimed mobile art stage structure at the FORM Festival— showcases his ability to transform environments through technology and immersive design.
Together, Iryna and Charles merge curation, technology, and production expertise to create large-scale, participatory experiences that blur the line between art and audience. The team leading the production of Lumenaura 2025: Convergence.
Planet Swamp
Planet Swamp is an immersive, multisensory environment that transforms public space into a surreal portal to another planet. Interactive video wall mirrors visitors movements in real time. The atmosphere is enriched with low-hanging fog, fog-filled bubbles (“fobbles”) that release wisps of mist when popped, laser line projections evoking the illusion of shifting water, scent-infused fog, and layered ambient soundscapes. Together, these elements create a 4D experience of another world.
Laser Show
A site-specific laser-mapped light show illuminates the historic Paramount Theatre, celebrating Aurora’s architectural heritage and identity as the “City of Lights.” The show transforms the theater into a radiant landmark visible from the Promenade, East Galena Bridge, and East Downer Bridge, offering audiences a shared moment of wonder and civic pride.
Oliver lewis - Up-next
Oliver Lewis grew up on a small farm where his family ran a construction business. As a child, he operated heavy machinery and developed a lifelong interest in mechanical systems. After high school, he studied chemical engineering and considered medicine but ultimately pursued a career in the arts. His first exhibition, Drawn: Crossing the Line, was shown at the McColl Center for Visual Art, which later invited him to be an Artist-in-Residence. From then on, science, robotics, and community engagement became central to his artistic practice.
Up-Next is an interactive sculpture inspired by the aesthetics of 1980s television sets. This dynamic installation features ten kaleidoscopes as the TV screen that creates captivating light patterns, offering a unique and engaging experience for the public.
The interactive aspect of Up-Next allows visitors to modify the installation’s ambiance by adjusting colors, animation speed, and light movement by changing the TV channels. This hands-on approach ensures that each interaction is a personalized and memorable experience.
Robin Baumgarten - Quantum Jungle
Robin Baumgarten is an award-winning experimental hardware game developer and interactive installation artist based in Berlin. After researching Artificial Intelligence in Games and working on mobile games, he is now fully focused on creating playful interactive installations that straddle the divide of games and art, such as Line Wobbler and Wobble Garden. His most recent projects also involve a scientific aspect: Quantum Garden and its larger sequel, Quantum Jungle, both visualise quantum physics in a playful yet scientifically accurate manner.
Common among all of Robin’s art is tactile interactivity and immediate response: His installations invite human touch and respond with vivid and playful reactions. His medium of choice in his latest works reflects this: metal springs that wobble, dance, and push back against touch, which is measured with precise sensors and visualised on large LED arrangements that defy common grid structures.
Quantum Jungle is an interactive art installation that playfully visualizes Quantum Physics concepts on a large wall filled with over 1000 novel touch-sensitive metal springs and thousands of LEDs. It calculates Schrödinger's Equation to model the movement of a quantum particle, and demonstrates concepts such as superposition, interference, wave-particle duality, and quantum waveform collapse while maintaining a playful approach that attracts children and adults alike, sparking curiosity and wonder.
Scott Boeing - Vivid Volume
Scott Boeing is a designer and animator who creates interactive light sculptures that blur the lines between digital media and physical space. With a foundation in animation and visual design, he adapts audiovisual concepts to new mediums, crafting immersive experiences that engage audiences through movement, light, and interactivity.
His recent projects explore the intersection of technology and presence, creating experiences where viewers become participants. Whether mapping thousands of string lights across a forest canopy or programming a 3D LED matrix to mirror live silhouettes, his sculptures invite audiences to see themselves reflected in light.
With a focus on reuse and evolution, Scott often adapts previous systems for new contexts, layering generative animation with real-time data to create works that feel both organic and responsive. His installations have been featured at festivals and public events, offering moments of connection through interactivity, scale, and wonder.
Vivid Volume Guests enter an interactive zone where their movements are mirrored in a vibrant 3D grid of light. Real-time tracking and animated visuals create a responsive, immersive experience. From the outside, the display appears abstract and fragmented. Inside the zone, the reflection sharpens into a clear and striking image.
11 Dimensions - Illoominated 2 | Laser Graffiti
11 Dimensions is an arts studio based in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, led by principals Todd Moyer and Rocio Zarate. They specialize in Experiential Design with a focus on Art and Technology. The conversation between object and viewer can take many forms, but they have found the experience of joy to be a powerful key to unlock the door to deeper messages, about how we relate to each other and our environment, or to commemorate culture and history.
Illoominated 2
The eye-catching installation is a delightful juxtaposition of Industrial Revolution-era machinery with the non-material technology of photon manipulation. Going back to the 1700s, looms were surprisingly complex machines and precursors to mechanical computers. In 1804, the Jacquard loom was patented, which stored data mechanically and used punch cards to program various patterns. Soon after, Charles Babbage worked on the Difference Engine, a mechanical computer that used many techniques taken from the loom. Babbage has been credited as the "father of the computer", but it was actually his protégé, the precocious Ada Lovelace, who envisioned the broader potential of programmable machines.
"Turing Complete" refers to any computer, whether mechanical, electronic, or biological, that is sufficiently advanced that it can simulate the behavior of any other computer. The term "computer" is used loosely because it can refer to any system that supports certain basic functions. One of those systems is cellular automata, the type of algorithm used to generate the output of the Illoominated 2. We can see complex emergent behavior from the simplest of algorithms, and perhaps the emergence life itself, with universes existing inside other universes via Simulacra and Simulation.
Laser Graffiti is an interactive graffiti experience using projection mapping and spray-can shaped lasers. Become the artist and paint on the walls with digital ink.
VisualPower - Bonfire
During this time, VisualPower had introduced the creative use of led walls and projection mapping systems first and foremost to the Hungarian event industry and became a houshold name for TV-shows, festivals and major domestic events.
We’re proud to note that Visualpower organized and hosted the world’s first mapping contest under the name ’PaintUp!’ in Budapest in 2010 and two consecutive years that followed.
In the meantime, our activity continuously expanded into several successful international projects and collaborations realised beyond our borders from United Arab Emirates to Las Vegas, USA, from Shanghai, China to several European countries.
When the COVID-pandemic changed life and business for everyone, we repositioned ourselves in search for new ways and opportunities that brought us to designing, building and operating unique, tailor-made, pixel driven interactive led installations dedicated to both Light and Music Festivals as well as special occassions.
Although we have come a long way in the process, we’re still newcomers. We have a thousand ideas and even more committment towards led light installations. The slogen of our „LedBlade” ledbar brand could not be more fitting in these terms as those led installations are and always will be „Much more than a ledstripe”.
Zenith Creative - Particles of You
The Zenith Creative is a multidisciplinary media company founded by Brian Olivo in 2020 that is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of art and technology. We specialize in audio, lighting, lasers, video, special effects and set design, blending these elements into immersive and unforgettable experiences.
Our recent work focuses on cutting edge multimedia art installations that fuse lighting, video, depth cameras, and sound to create unique, eccentric environments for a wide range of applications. With expertise in branding, marketing activations, and interactive design, we craft installations that invite audiences to engage deeply and leave lasting impressions. At The Zenith Creative, every project is designed to spark curiosity, inspire connection, and make the experience truly unforgettable.
Particles of You
Step into a space where your movements ignite color.
Using invisible sensors, Particles of You turns your presence into bursts of light and pigments, like fireworks hanging in midair and paint splashed across an unseen canvas. Each person becomes both artist and subject, scattering digital colors that exist only for a heartbeat before dissolving back into the darkness. This piece invites you to witness your body’s motion as living, moving art.