During Milan Design Week 2026 at Alcova @alcova.milano , sugarwave presented an interactive installation called Submerged Experiment: Unearthing the Algorithm.
Most people were first drawn to Boop’s appearance.
Then, once they realized it could “listen” to sound, they started talking to it, clapping, making strange noises, and testing how it would respond.
Slowly, more and more people stopped to watch.
Some crouched down to observe the Boops “communicating.”
Some stayed for a long time.
Some even came back again after walking away.
The most interesting part was seeing strangers start talking to each other simply because they were watching Boop react together.
They felt like a newly excavated species —
something between creature, machine, and light.
Listening, influencing one another, glowing together.
For us, this was less about exhibiting an object,
and more about testing a new kind of relationship between technology, environment, and people.
✨Thank you to everyone who visited us!
#MilanDesignWeek #Alcova #sugarwave #boop #InteractiveInstallation #LightingDesign #DesignWeek #ExperimentalDesign #TechArt #FutureLiving #LightInstallation #ParametricDesign #DigitalCraft #SoundReactive #ContemporaryDesign #CollectibleDesign #DesignExhibition #ArtInstallation #Atmosphere #DesignInspiration #ItalianDesign
We brought a small colony of sound-listening Boop into Alcova. @alcova.milano
“Sunken Laboratory: Unearthing Algorithms” was Sugarwave’s live installation experiment during Milan Design Week — an acoustic interactive environment formed by a group of Boop creatures.
Each Boop senses sound, responds to nearby activity, and reacts to one another like an unknown species slowly awakening together.
Boop is not a conventional lamp.
It exists somewhere between creature, machine, and lighting object.
As people approach, speak, or make noise, a chain reaction begins across the space — light becomes “activated.”
When separated from the colony, each Boop can also exist independently, with a constant-light mode functioning as a table lamp or wall light.
This was the first time we presented Boop as a collective life form.
A living cluster of responsive light objects. ✨
Documentation from
“Sunken Laboratory: Unearthing Algorithms” at Alcova Milano.
#sugarwave #boop #alcova #alcovamilano #milandesignweek #InteractiveInstallation #LightInstallation #MediaArt #SpatialDesign #DesignArt #GenerativeDesign #FutureObjects #ParametricDesign #CreativeTechnology #SoundReactive #InteractiveArt #LightingDesign #InstallationArt #DesignStudio #ExperimentalDesign
Summer is for glowing and zoning out. ✨
A terrace dinner, warm evening air, the sound of ice clinking in glasses,
and a little Boop that looks like it drifted ashore from the sea.
Lately I’ve been loving this feeling —
sun-soaked days, slow dinners at night, long conversations, warm wind on the skin.
Letting soft and slightly strange little things stay with summer a bit longer.
#summermood #summernight #terracevibes #holidaymood #slowliving #tablescape #ambientlighting #designobject #interiordesign #lightart #dreamyinteriors #italiansummer #vacationvibes #softminimalism #atmospheric #glowingobjects #contemporarydesign #collectibledesign #boop #sugarwave
Lake water, hot wind, and a transparent creature that came ashore.
The sunlight at Lake Como was intense.
The water looked like liquid glass, and the air smelled of plants and summer heat.
In our Milan Design Week interactive installation Sunken Experiment: Unearthed Algorithms,
Boop originally appeared as part of a “colony.”
They gathered, sensed, and reacted to one another,
like an unknown life system excavated from somewhere beneath the surface.
Even when separated from the group,
each Boop still retains its ability to sense the surrounding environment.
We love this feeling of existing somewhere between an installation and a living organism —
able to function as one node within a larger interactive system,
but also able to exist independently,
like a small luminous creature that breathes and responds to the world around it.
Placed by the shore of Lake Como,
Boop suddenly felt like something that had just emerged from underwater.
Transparent, soft, almost humid,
slowly unfolding its textures beneath the sun.
Summer gives everything a strange vitality.
The light is sharp, the wind is warm,
and even still objects begin to feel alive.
#sugarwave #boop #lakecomo #milandesignweek #interactiveinstallation #lightingdesign #designart #robotic3dprinting #parametricdesign #Alcova #collectibledesign #lamps
Sunken Experiment: Unearthed Algorithms
now on view at Alcova 2026, Milan
A submerged laboratory.
Forms shaped by code, material, and time.
If you’re in Milan, come experience the installation. @alcova.milano
📍 Baggio Military Hospital
Tempio — T10
#Alcova2026 #MilanDesignWeek #sugarwave #InstallationArt #3dprinting
The shape of sound, made visible.
A small colony of Boop has been awakened.
Before heading to Alcova, we brought a small group of Boop together for a test. Each light exists as an individual,
but when placed together, they begin to respond as a collective.
This is only a fragment. In Milan, they will form a complete colony of light.
April 20–26
See you at Alcova. More details in previous posts.
#sugarwave #Boop #Alcova #MilanDesignWeek #InteractiveInstallation #LightArt #DesignInstallation #ParametricDesign #RoboticFabrication #SoundReactive #LightingDesign #DesignExhibition #lighting #installation #interactive #3dprint
Something is waking up in Milan. sugarwave presents.
At Alcova during Milan Design Week 2026, we unveil a new installation:
Sunken Experiment: Unearthed Algorithms
A narrative of a submerged laboratory,
of algorithms brought back to light,
and a colony of luminous entities slowly awakening.
📅 April 20–26 11am-7pm
📍 Baggio Military Hospital Complex · Tempio T10
More to be revealed.
#alcova #milandesignweek #italiano #sugarwave #exhibitions #artcollectors #lightingdesign #boop #robotic #3dprint
🔍 More details await to be unearthed at Alcova, Milano @alcova.milano
🏷️ Exhibition
Sunken Experiment: Unearthed Algorithms
📅 Dates
April 20–26
📍 Location
Baggio Military Hospital Complex, Tempio T10
Set within a site where historical architecture meets experimental design, this “excavated laboratory” invites you to uncover what has been left behind —and what is beginning to emerge again.
👣 If you’re visiting Milan Design Week, step in as a future discoverer
and unlock each moment as it is being unearthed.
#sugarwave #roboticfabrication #3dprint #lamps #interactiveinstallation #installation #milano #italiano #alcova #exhibitions #artcollectors
We’re excited to share that sugarwave will be part of Alcova Milano this April.
Boop is arriving — not as a single object, but as a luminous colony.
What you see here is the moment of its becoming: each Boop printed, formed, and awakened.
At Alcova, these individual entities will gather into an interactive installation, evolving from object to organism, from singular to collective.
Each piece carries the trace of its own emergence — a record of being printed, constructed, and brought to life.
“Sunken Experiment: Unearthed Algorithms” unfolds as a submerged laboratory, where these light-based entities begin to inhabit the space.
Come experience the next stage of their evolution.
📅 April 20–26
🕚 11:00 – 19:00
📍 Tempio, Room T10
Baggio Military Hospital
Via Giovanni Labus 15, Milano
#AlcovaMilano #MilanDesignWeek #sugarwave #Boop #InteractiveInstallation #DesignArt #RoboticFabrication #3dprint #exhibitions #milano
🤔 If one day humans were gone, what would the objects we created leave behind? 🔍
📅 Exhibition Dates: April 20–26
📍 Location: Baggio Military Hospital Complex Tempio T10
🏷️ Exhibition: Sunken Experiment: Unearthed Algorithms
From April 20–26, Sugarwave presents the immersive installation “Sunken Experiment: Unearthed Algorithms.”
The exhibition unfolds from a future archaeological perspective:
🏚️ Imagine a laboratory that has been abandoned and slowly submerged by time.
Future visitors arrive and discover a collection of luminous “specimens.”
They are not natural organisms, but forms repeatedly generated through robotic-arm 3D printing. Each print contains subtle variations, preserved like genetic traces. Over time, these differences accumulate into an archive jointly written by humans, machines, materials, and environment — a set of algorithmic fossils left behind.
The exhibition space is staged as a rediscovered experimental site:
🧬 DNA labels
📦 specimen boxes
📝 research notes
Together they document the evolutionary traces of these human–machine “species.”
💡 The luminous objects forming the installation are Boop, an interactive lighting piece by Sugarwave.
Boop is both part of the exhibition and available as a limited-edition collectible lamp during the show. Each piece is produced by robotic printing, preserving the flowing textures of material deposition and algorithmic paths. It exists somewhere between experimental artifact and everyday light object.
👣 If you are visiting Milan Design Week, step into this rediscovered laboratory —
and experience the exhibition as a future discoverer.
🏥 About the venue
The Baggio Military Hospital Complex was originally built in the mid-20th century as a hospital for the Italian armed forces. Designed in a rationalist modernist style, the complex features low horizontal wings, symmetrical courtyards, and reinforced concrete structures typical of postwar institutional architecture in Milan.
#MilanDesignWeek #alcova #booplamp #sugarwave #digitalcraft #designinstallation #futurearchaeology #lightingdesign #robotic3dprinting #computationaldesign
