Barrel Cube was a 6×6×6 meter structure we built in the forests of the Kaluga region for the electronic music festival Signal, where we performed as long-term residents for many years.

The piece was commissioned by the vodka brand Finlandia.

It was a massive light-and-sound landscape instrument made from metal barrels arranged into a cubic architecture.

The barrels at human height — the entire bottom row — were fitted with contact mics and touch sensors. When visitors hit them with sticks or palms, like drums or tam-tams, the barrels produced bright, metallic, rusty polyphony.

But the hit didn’t just create sound.

Each touch triggered a custom program that played recordings of Finnish forest creatures through speakers suspended around the cube: owls, wolves, coyotes, and other nocturnal animals that inhabit northern woods.

In the center of the structure hung an inflatable moon — an abstract white sphere lit from inside by RGB strips. It reacted to every interaction, shifting its glow with each strike and sensor touch.

During the festival we staged a dance performance inside the cube,

and for the rest of the event the structure functioned as an ambient rave dance floor —

a glowing, humming, responsive machine in the middle of the forest.