Aether is an experience grounded in beauty, intensity and immersion. A new form of installation and live performance system born from the convergence between music, art and architecture. Audiences explore a 3-dimensional light field suspended overhead, each twist and flow of the shimmering waves synced to musical form. The system is named after the Luminiferous Aether*, creating a new canvas for expression and storytelling in everyday spaces.

The project is a collaboration between electronic musician, Max Cooper, and architectural design studio Architecture Social Club. The two have been experimenting and exploring ideas for a new type of audio-visual experience for years, with Aether being the culmination of this process.

Aether tells a story of human creation and destruction, with 3D projections providing visually mapped statistics of the successes and disasters of human endeavour – beginning with fire, logical thought and construction, technology, communication and monetisation. An interpretation of the aesthetics of “progress” presented alongside their mixed effects on wider society.


*meaning light-bearing aether. A postulated medium for the propagation of light. It was a debunked scientific theory which attempted to show the existence of a static fabric of the universe underlying all of physical existence - a sort of blank canvas on which reality occurred.