While the Light Hesitates

From the top of the Round Tower, the light installation “While the Light Hesitates” will kick off  Lightyear 2026. The work, created by Yoke, allows the tower’s visitors and passersby to sense the nature of light through scale, space, and time.

Inspired by Ole Rømer’s observation of Jupiter’s innermost moon, Io, the installation translates light’s subtle hesitation into circular light formations that recreate the moment when light reveals its own speed.

Yoke combines technology, space, and storytelling in sensory and interactive works that explore how we experience and understand the world. As storytellers, designers, creative technologists, and makers, they work in the borderland between art, design, and communication—driven by curiosity and a desire to turn knowledge into experience.

The installation can be experienced as part of the Copenhagen Light Festival and is included in the program for LIGHT YEAR 2026 in the Round Tower—an entire year dedicated to celebrating light and the 350th anniversary of Ole Rømer’s groundbreaking discovery of the speed of light.