Under blue light, a patch of real wildflowers turns from ordinary greenery into something stranger. At the 2026 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Brussels-based artist Adrien Lucca and a team of scientists showed how the same plants might look through elephant hawkmoth eyes. The installation is called Parallel World.
The work uses a small indoor meadow of living plants under a computer-controlled LED system. The lighting changes at regular intervals. Pink blossoms are scattered through dense foliage, and the flowers never move. Only the light does.
Under the bluish phase, green leaves darken to brown or nearly black. The flowers stand out sharply against them. The effect depends on which wavelengths reach the plants and reflect back to the viewer. The arrangement stays the same, but the color composition does not.
Why elephant hawkmoth eyes matter
The installation draws on the visual system of the elephant hawkmoth, Deilephila elpenor. This nocturnal pollinator can tell colors apart in very dim light. Humans lose most of their color perception after sunset. Elephant hawkmoth eyes keep identifying flowers under faint starlight.
Elephant hawkmoth eyes respond to ultraviolet wavelengths as well as the blue-to-green part of the spectrum. That gives the insect visual information that people cannot access. Research published in Nature in 2002 showed that moth color perception extends to conditions comparable to dim starlight.
Sound offers another window into animal perception. Argentine physicist revives lost bird songs is worth a look.
Lucca built the 2026 installation with color scientist Ali Aiman Raza, researcher Colas Schretter and biologist Marko Ilić, whose work focuses on insect vision. The team used programmable lighting to translate parts of the moth’s visual environment into colors that visitors can see.
The translation is an approximation. Human eyes cannot perceive ultraviolet light directly. Elephant hawkmoth eyes also process images differently from ours. The garden still offers a concrete way to approach a sensory world that would otherwise stay out of reach.
Earlier experiments with light and wildflowers
The project grew out of Lucca’s earlier work with plant pigmentation and artificial light. In 2022, he worked with LMNO Gallery in Brussels and the Belgian seed producer Ecosem on Mondes parallèles. The installation put wildflowers under programmable lamps.
By adjusting the spectrum, Lucca changed how colors related to one another within the planting. Some flowers seemed to advance, while others sank into the vegetation. The piece tested how flowering plants developed their visual traits alongside pollinating insects over long evolutionary periods.
During a 2024 residency with Gluon in Brussels, Lucca focused on elephant hawkmoth eyes and the colors of night. His 2025 exhibition at LMNO, titled À l’aube du crépuscule, combined paintings and luminous sculptures that traced the changing light of twilight.
One drawing, Rosetta, compared human and hawkmoth sensitivities. It used visible red to stand in for ultraviolet. The living garden carries that comparison into a physical space, where visitors can watch the difference happen.
How artificial light reaches pollinators
Flowers carry colors and patterns that help them signal to pollinators. Some of those markings are visible only in ultraviolet light. Their appearance also depends on the light falling on them, so streetlights can change the signals that insects receive after dark.
A 2017 study published in Nature found that nocturnal flower visits fell by 62 percent in artificially lit plant communities compared with dark areas. The study linked that drop to consequences for plant reproduction.
The type of light matters too. A 2021 study in Nature used the elephant hawkmoth’s visual system as a model to test how different artificial light sources affect how flowers stand out against leaves. Some spectra kept or improved color contrast. Narrow-band orange light made floral colors harder for the moth to distinguish.
The 2021 findings show that artificial light can change how insects navigate their surroundings. The wavelength and intensity of a lamp shape what an insect can see, even when the scene looks clear to people.
Designing light for other species
Parallel World has been presented in Gdańsk and at Ars Electronica in 2026. Lucca’s work has long examined how light shapes perception, often through custom lighting systems that alter painted surfaces or architectural spaces. Here, the same methods apply to living plants and the animals that visit them.
Streetlights and garden lighting are usually designed around human needs. Their light, however, reaches habitats used by many other organisms. The installation asks what lighting might look like if those other forms of vision were part of the brief, especially in public landscapes where people and nocturnal wildlife share space.
Art that reshapes living systems raises similar questions about landscapes. Straw walls shaping an ecosystem in Extremadura is a comparable open-air example.
The flowers in the installation do not change. A shift in illumination is enough to show how much of a familiar landscape depends on the observer. The garden offers a view of a visual world that runs alongside our own.
Project details
Artists and researchers: Adrien Lucca (@studioadrienlucca), Ali Aiman Raza, Colas Schretter and Marko Ilić. Year: 2026, building on experiments begun in 2022. Locations: Łaźnia, Gdańsk, Poland, and the Ars Electronica Festival, Linz, Austria. Festival: Negotiating Beyond Humanity, Ars Electronica 2026.
Development partners include Studio Adrien Lucca, Gluon, STUDIOTOPIA 2.0, S+T+ARTS and LMNO, with additional institutional support. The source chapter is presented in partnership with INDX|GLOBAL, a cultural platform focused on Indian architecture, design and creative practice.
Sources & Links
Source: designboom.com
Frequently asked questions
What is the Parallel World installation about?
Parallel World is an installation by Brussels-based artist Adrien Lucca and a team of scientists, shown at the 2026 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz. It shows how the same wildflowers might look through elephant hawkmoth eyes, using a small indoor meadow of living plants under computer-controlled LED lighting that changes at regular intervals.
Why does the installation use elephant hawkmoth eyes?
The elephant hawkmoth can tell colors apart in very dim light, while humans lose most of their color perception after sunset. The moth’s eyes also respond to ultraviolet wavelengths, which gives it visual information that people cannot access.
Who worked with Adrien Lucca on Parallel World?
Lucca built the 2026 installation with color scientist Ali Aiman Raza, researcher Colas Schretter, and biologist Marko Ilić, whose work focuses on insect vision.
How does artificial light affect nocturnal flower visits?
A 2017 study published in Nature found that nocturnal flower visits fell by 62 percent in artificially lit plant communities compared with dark areas. The study linked that drop to consequences for plant reproduction.
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