Preston Park Museum in Stockton-on-Tees, England, will host Submergence, an immersive walk-through installation by the artists Squidsoup. It opens on 23 October 2026 and runs until 7 March 2027 in The Spence Building, the museum's exhibition space, as a family-oriented sensory experience.
Visitors move through a physically enveloping three-dimensional volume of suspended lights. Thousands of individually controlled points of light create shifting patterns of colour, light and sound that surround people as they walk, and the environment responds to their presence and movement. Squidsoup describes the piece as a hybrid space in which virtual and physical worlds coincide, with content generated in real time.
A touring work since 2013
Submergence was first exhibited at Galleri ROM in Oslo, Norway, from 17 January to 17 February 2013. The touring version, an incremental development of the original from 2016, can be installed indoors or outdoors. Squidsoup reports that it has been shown in over 70 spaces and events on six continents. Venues the producer names include:
- Adelaide Festival, Australia (2015)
- SIGGRAPH, Los Angeles (2016)
- Usina del Arte, Buenos Aires (2016)
- Scottsdale Museum of Modern Art, Arizona (2017)
- Burning Man, Nevada (2018 and 2019)
- Canary Wharf, London (2019)
- Ars Pedregal, Mexico City (2019)
- Place de l'Albertine, Brussels (2019)
The Preston Park run is hosted by the museum and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, which is presenting the work as an experience for the whole family.
