This year, Sónar+D heads to Fira Gran Via for the very first time, bringing the creative, innovative and technologically-minded spirit of our ‘event like no other’ into the main Sónar venue. The Sónar+D team has commissioned a reactive architectural sculpture especially for the event, developed by leading immersive experience designers LedPulse.
For Sónar 2026, they’re developing a bespoke version of their light-and-sound environment ORGANYSMO, which uses architectural design, immersive sound, volumetric lighting and reactive elements that bring the audience into an enormous, living and breathing sculpture.
Using LedPulse’s patented ‘DragonO’ system, ORGANYSMO builds 3-D images using thousands of points of LED lights, transforming light into a sculptural material. Instead of seeing visuals projected onto a flat surface, the audience is surrounded by moving shapes, colours and forms that hover and unfold in the space around them.
At Fira Gran Via, they’re building a 30 x 30m living architectural sculpture, featuring 720m of LED ‘neurons’ that form a dense volumetric field. The structure itself is dynamic and continuously evolving, powered by more than 140 independently controlled motors that shift the LED panels, reshaping the architecture of the sculpture in real-time, playing with perceptions of space and scale.
Enhancing the experience is a 16-channel spatial audio system, which creates sound in real-time, perfectly synchronised with the shifting LED strips and lighting patterns. Powered by Ableton, the sound processes make use of the full sonic spectrum - from low-frequency sub bass to high-pitched tones - to echo and enhance the installation’s movements.
Tying the installation’s three key elements together - lighting, sound, visual rendering - are a series of sensors that are designed to respond to what’s happening in and around the structure. Instead of treating interaction as a process of read and react, the ORGANYSMO acts as a cognitive system, perceiving the audience as part of a continuous feedback loop that use presence, movement, behaviour and environmental conditions to shape the space, lighting and sound in real-time. At its core, the system is powered by over 700,000 coordinated microchips, making it one of the largest distributed computational systems ever deployed in the history of digital art.
More than just an ‘installation’, this is a modern architectural creation that unites art, technology and creativity. Inspired by Barcelona’s history as a capital of architectural innovation and its status as the 2026 UNESCO-UIA World Capital of Architecture, this is the biggest and most ambitious project of its kind that Sónar has ever hosted.
Anyone with a ticket for Sónar 2026 at Fira Gran Via on Thursday, Friday or Saturday will be able to experience the installation. Haven’t got a ticket yet? Grab yours here.