Small music stage by Love Hultén attracts sperm and eggs

Swedish manufacturer Love Hultén has collaborated with Swedish music festival Way Out West to create the Future Fan Stage for an audience of sperm and eggs awaiting artificial insemination.

The Future Fan Stage combines elements of laboratory equipment and a live music stage with sound-reactive lighting effects, a performer represented by a reservoir of “dancing” ferrofluid, and racks of test tubes forming the crowd.

The stage is an initiative of the Way Out West festival, which wanted to raise awareness of the importance of growing the live music scene.

The idea came from one of the festival’s partners, the creative agency NORD DDB, after they came across a study showing that music improved fertilization rates during in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“We thought it would be cheeky to do something on that basis,” Way Out West project manager Kimmie Winroth told Dezeen.

“If music can exert such power at this stage, it certainly underlines its importance and the need to keep the music scene alive.”

To implement the stage concept, the festival hired Hultén, who is known for his individually manufactured synthesizers and other technical objects.

Hultén’s design encloses the stage with an all-white console inspired by various medical devices.

“The goal here was to create an interesting balance between medical lab components and live set ingredients, and I tried to use strong visual references from both – often combined where possible,” said Hultén.

The stage is equipped with special miniature spotlights, an LED background and sound-reactive lighting effects, while other decorative elements are based on the look of medical isolation chambers.

A Bluetooth speaker system provides the sound, while a reservoir of ferrofluid – called “dancing black goo” by Hultén – sits in the center of the stage and moves to the beat of the music thanks to a hidden electromagnet that responds to the audio.

“I originally wanted to use smoke – a nice nod to nebulisation in medical sterilization and classic smoke effects on stage. But for clinical reasons we never ended up using it,” Hultén added.

The designer said the console’s many switches, faders and knobs are functional and can control parameters such as lighting, volume and Bluetooth pairing.

The small tube-like protrusions on the right casing that look like microscope-style eyepieces are actually two tweeters. Below, a waveform audio visualizer on a round display is reminiscent of a heart monitor.

The Future Fan Stage was installed in a real IVF clinic, Elivia in Stockholm, where it played recorded live music from some of the headliners of Way Out West in 2024, including Fred Again, Peggy Gou, Queens of the Stone Age and Pulp.

However, the test tubes were empty and the stage was not connected to any medical device so as not to disrupt the clinic’s standard procedures.

Hultén’s previous designs included a wooden synthesizer that folds up like an old-fashioned toolbox and a glass-domed shrine for the Nintendo Entertainment System.