Artist and Animator
Born in 1987 in Denmark, Jakob Kudsk Steensen is an artist working with environmental storytelling through virtual world building, spatial sound and large-scale installations. He creates poetic interpretations of overlooked natural phenomena in video, photo, audio, game and virtual reality formats. Projects use intuitions, sensory registrations, memories and imaginations to form experiences that allow a deeper connection with real-world environments.
His projects are constructed through extensive periods of fieldwork, and developed in collaboration with field biologists, composers, scientists, designers and writers. Key collaborators include musician Arca, experimental cellist Okkyung Lee, composer and musical director for the Philip Glass Ensemble Michael Riesman, ornithologist and author Dr. H. Douglas Pratt, architect Sir David Adjaye, South Korean pop band BTS, Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, among others. Ongoing collaborators include sound artist Matt McCorkle, interactive installation producer Andrea Familari, video game developer Wouter Weynants and compositional artist Lugh O’Neill.
Mr. Steensen has recently exhibited “The Ephemeral Lake” at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2024, as well as participating in Korea’s 2024 Gwangju Biennale featuring “Berl-Berl,” a virtual pulsating swamp, which was originally commissioned by LAS Art Space for Halle am Berghain in Berlin in 2021. His work “Liminal Lands” was commissioned by the Luma Foundation for the “Prélude” exhibition at Luma Arles in 2021, and “Catharsis” was shown at the Serpentine Galleries in 2020 as part of “Connect BTS”. He also received the inaugural Serpentine Augmented Architecture commission in 2019 to create “The Deep Listener” with Google Arts and Culture.
In 2019, he was the recipient of the Best VR Graphics award at the 2019 Cinequest Festival for Technology and Cinema and the Prix du Jury at Les Rencontres Arles for “RE-ANIMATED.” Among other accolades, he is a previous Webby Awards winner under the People’s Choice VR category and the Games for Change Award for most innovative.
In 2024, in his home nation of Denmark, “Berl-Berl” was acquired by ARoS Museum of Art and “RE-ANIMATED” was exhibited at ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art.
