MADE OF STARDUST is an interactive audiovisual installation that investigates our human connection to outer space. The artwork consists of a video projector or LED screen, soundscape, and machine learning–generated visuals based on audience interaction and data sourced from scientific repositories, including NASA’s IPAC archive and the James Webb and Hubble telescopes.

Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm’s installation investigates the cosmic, yet microscopic, world around us. Stardust connects us to remote galaxies and to all things here on Earth. All elements in our bodies—iron, zinc, calcium—come from dust created by the explosions of stars, more than 4.5 billion years ago. Even today, stardust continues to reach us. Every minute, tiny particles of micrometeorites, less than a millimeter in size, rain on Earth from outer space and carry remains of the earlier universe in the form of stardust from pre-solar times. While these particles are invisible to the human eye, they remind us of the presence of the universe on Earth and that we, humans, are made of stardust.

MADE OF STARDUST connects the viewer directly with their space heritage by transforming their bodies into an avatar made of thousands of tiny, shining stardust particles.

MADE OF STARDUST is supported by the Novo Nordisk Foundation and realized in close collaboration with researcher Arka Sarangi of the DARK research centre at the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University. The artwork was developed for the Yet, It Moves! exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary. MADE OF STARDUST was created by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm and her art-tech studio ARTificial Mind consisting of assistant artist Cody Lukas, and software engineers Jens Hegner Stærmose, Asbjørn Olling, and Alexander Krog.