Signal Festival Starts This Thursday. Here Are 5 Tips to Make the Most of This Year’s Edition

Highlights include the first-ever projection mapping on the facade of the Archbishop’s Seminary, a monumental light installation by American artist Jim Campbell, and the festival’s first dedicated student zone. The installations are spread across two routes: one once again connects venues in central Prague, while the other takes visitors through Dejvice for the first time.

Tip 1: Explore the New Dejvice Route and Its Monumental Installations

Signal Festival is coming to Dejvice for the first time this year. The new route begins at the Troja–Podbaba navigation channel, continues to the Old Wastewater Treatment Plant, and winds through the neighborhood’s parks to the Dejvice Campus. At its starting point, Taiwanese artist Aka Chang presents Multimmersion_Upside Down, a 10-meter laser installation. The work uses the still surface of a side channel of the Vltava as a mirror. Reflected laser beams create the illusion of infinite depth, leaving viewers unsure of what is real.

At the nearby Old Wastewater Treatment Plant, Laterna magika presents the site-specific production Water. Directed by Radim Vizváry, it combines nonverbal theater, projection mapping, acrobatics, and live singing. Here, water purification becomes a metaphor for inner transformation: what we carry within us, what we can let go of, and how we can find renewal. The 10-minute performance is part of the ticketed Signal INSIDE program.

American digital art pioneer Jim Campbell, one of this year’s leading international artists, has created Scattered Light using 1,500 LEDs. Human figures appear and disappear in the glow of the installation in General Lázaro Cárdenas Park.

In the park on Fleming Square, visual artist and musician Milan Cais presents the audiovisual installation Into Imagination. A giant mirrored cube, seemingly from outer space, emits sequences of images and sounds from its center. Cais composed them using data collected from his fans. The installation is supported by glo™.

Czech art is also represented on the Dejvice route by Jan Kaláb’s sculpture Black Mechanical Planet at PPF Gate on Evropská Street. Evoking a giant cosmic mechanism, the sculpture is accompanied by a projection created specifically for it by Jan Hladil. The installation is supported by the PPF Foundation, a longstanding supporter of Signal Festival’s international program.

Tip 2: Discover Emerging Talent at Student Visions

For the first time, Signal Festival has created a dedicated student zone, Student Visions, offering a glimpse into the labs of the next generation of artists, scientists, and designers. These emerging talents take over Technická Street on the Dejvice Campus.

Students from the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) present their visions through Impulse, a light installation exploring the moment something begins: the first movement, discharge, signal, or thought. Their interactive projection FaceIt lets visitors turn facial expressions and movements into stylized portraits that capture each person’s unique expression. CTU is also behind EFORCE, an audiovisual projection tracing more than 15 years of development of the university’s student-built Formula race car. Students from the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, invite visitors to their Chemistry Show, asking how chemists dream. The performance transforms experiments into a spectacle of light and sound, showing that science, like art, is driven by curiosity and courage.

The festival’s support for emerging talent also extends to Karolína Schulzová’s installation What Are You Responsible For in the courtyard of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows. Inspired by Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, the work was created in collaboration with the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University and the organization Díky, že můžem. Illuminated panels simulate a network of everyday decisions. Visitors can walk freely among panels displaying statements that reflect passivity, witnessing the unraveling of a collective illusion. The work is supported by Václav Havel Airport Prague.

Tip 3: Catch Two Projection Mapping Firsts: A Dejvice Debut and a Work by a Ukrainian Woman Artist

One of the highlights of the new Dejvice route is projection mapping on the facade of the Archbishop’s Seminary. This is also where the 14th edition of Signal Festival officially opens on Thursday, October 15, at 7:00 PM. German artist Felix Frank’s Missing Interval transforms the facade into a dynamic landscape of light and rhythm.

This year’s second projection mapping work, Living in Truth by Ukrainian artist Svitlana Reinish, spans two walls of the Old Town Hall. It is the first projection mapping work created by a woman in Signal Festival’s history. The piece also draws on Václav Havel’s ideas and his essay The Power of the Powerless.

Tip 4: Enjoy More Intimate Experiences at Signal INSIDE’s Unconventional Indoor Venues

This year’s ticketed Signal INSIDE program offers eight installations: six on the City Center route and two in Dejvice. At X10 Theatre, visitors can travel To the Moon with American multimedia artist and musician Laurie Anderson and Taiwanese artist Hsin-Chien Huang. The 15-minute journey through space takes them into a poetic landscape filled with stories and unexpected encounters.

What might the world look like in 10,000 years? Dreaming Infinite, at the Church of Sts. Simon and Jude, explores that question. Dutch audiovisual artist and lighting designer Timo Lejeune sets the fleeting nature of technology in dialogue with the human desire to leave a mark for future generations.

Brno-based MUCHA Studio pays tribute to Woody and Steina Vasulka, pioneers of video art and experimental computer art. Its large-scale interactive installation Residual Signal: Homage to Woody Vasulka transforms the Masaryk Dormitory into a pulsing environment of light and projection experiments. Cameras break visitors’ images into fragments displayed on a wall of vintage CRT monitors.

Signal INSIDE tickets are available as one-day, four-day, or VIP passes. The VIP pass includes priority entry, the Mercedes-Benz VIP Shuttle between routes, and admission to the Signal Space digital art gallery, among other benefits.