Dusts Institute

A device for nocturnal encounters

As part of Licht für Vielfalt, we developed a simple tool: a light catcher.

It’s based on a well-known scientific method used in entomology using short wavelengths of light to attract nocturnal flying insects onto a white surface, where they can be observed without harm.

We adapted this principle into a participatory device.
During three evening workshops, visitors can gather around it together with an insect specialist, watching how different species respond to light in real time.

The device follows the same design language as the whole project,
patterns derived from the movement of moths around light.

What interested us was how a scientific method could become something you actually experience. Instead of observing from a distance, you’re standing there together, watching what happens. Insects arriving, reacting, moving through the light.
Within our workshops we are creating a moment where you slow down, get curious, and encounter nocturnal life up close.

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📍 Jutta-Steier Park
📅 Workshops: 17.4. / 26.4. / 9.5.

Free & open to everyone

Ein Projekt im Rahmen der Klima Biennale Wien
Supported by
DesignResearch Vienna

LIGHT RECLAIMED

The intervention in Jutta-Steier Park works directly with the existing street lamp.

Each of the 14 lamps is fitted with a system of two custom filters and info board.
Together, they shift the light spectrum while carrying a second layer of meaning: Every filter contains an engraved pattern which symbolises
a unique flight path of a different moth species.

These patterns follow the design language of the project:
movement translated into geometry, non-human trajectories becoming visible gesture.

During the day, the engravings appear as quiet drawings on the surface of the filters.
But at night, they begin to emerge When you look into the light (while eyes slightly narrowed) the patterns reveal themselves within the glow.

A trace of movement inside the light itself.

Each lamp becomes both a functional object and a carrier of a specific story;
14 lights, 14 site-specific species, 14 trajectories of attraction.

A reminder that even the most ordinary infrastructure
can hold invisible relationships to the all beings that lives around it.

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📍 Jutta-Steier Park
📅 9.4.–10.5.2026

Ein Projekt im Rahmen der Klima Biennale Wien
Supported by

DesignResearch MoreThanHuman Vienna