1.74 Miles of LED Strands Create One Giant Tree in Old German Gas Storage Tower

March 30, 2026 by guest author, Valentin Klass

At the Gasometer Oberhausen — a 1920s industrial gas storage tower in Western Germany, now repurposed as an event and exhibition space — a new show opened this March: “Mythos Baum” (“Mythical Tree”). Its centerpiece is a 35-meter-high tree brought to life as a dazzling light sculpture by hundreds of LED strands.

The creative brains behind it are Ars Electronica, who handled the concept, media, and motion design. The tech side came from Berlin’s Garamantis, which built a custom software to bring the installation to life.

Here’s a video of the installation:

The teams worked on-site through the winter under tight deadlines. Instead of relying on pre-rendered animation, everything was adjusted in real time.

“We could test content directly on the tree, tweak it, and sync it perfectly with hardware, projection, and music,” says Marcus Dittebrand, Head of Software Development at Garamantis.

The result is a digital tree that’s coming alive through constant interaction with its environment. Through light, sound, narration, and projection, visitors see it wake from winter and move through the seasons.

“Mythos Baum” is a 35-meter-high tree made up of 1.74 miles of LED strands. (Image: Thomas Wolf | Gasometer Oberhausen)

Technically, it consists of 1.74 miles (2.8 kilometers) of LED strands that run from the tree’s roots to its crown, with more than 40,000 individually controllable pixels. Six projectors light a ceiling canvas that becomes the tree’s leafy canopy.

“Mythos Baum” runs until December 30, 2026. It follows “Planet Ozean,” the previous Gasometer exhibition that drew 1.5 million visitors over 20 months — the venue’s most successful exhibition yet.

“With ‘The Tree,’ we’re creating a centerpiece that shows what we do best: an artistic concept that only works when creativity and technology come together perfectly,” says Michael Mondria, Director at Ars Electronica.

(Header image: Thomas Schwarz | Ars Electronica)