Columns of fire leap out from the walls, but they don’t burn you. You can stand in the middle of a large fountain – without getting wet. Or you can step into a room where everything changes colour instantly so you either feel relaxed or you get your energy boosted depending on your state of mind.

These may sound like scenarios from the future, but they become reality at ARoS in 2009. The museum, which normally focuses on art in the 21st century, celebrates its 150th anniversary by turning an eye both backwards and forwards in time – and in both cases involving the visitors by getting them contribute to the experience themselves.

Technological works of art
By a trick of technology, visitors to the museum are transported 100 years forward in time providing them with the opportunity to have a direct influence on ARoS’s spring exhibition ‘ENTER ACTION – Digital Art Now’.

Thirteen noted artists from abroad present their works on how technology can lead to aesthetic art touching the people of today by inviting interaction with the audience. It may be by means of monitoring the individual visitor's pulse and having it control the light and colours in an exhibition room or it may be through robotic art installations.

This spring’s visions for the future will be followed by an exhibition in autumn. Here Jeppe Hein, a representative of the brand new generation of internationally noted Danish artists, will be applying technology to create artistic experiences. The main gallery at ARoS will be festooned with cubes – some of them you can look inside, others you can walk inside and see and experience the weird and the wonderful, such as mirror rooms where the dimensions get blurred, columns of fire leaping out from the walls, and surrealistic benches morphing into bizarre seats.

Ping-pong with the history of art
On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Aarhus Art Museum, ARoS will also look back in time, yet once again in a surprising and somewhat provocative way. Not only will the visitors be provided with a glimpse into the collections tucked-away in the museum’s archives, there will also be a sort of ping-pong with the history of art, with the works of the old world being exhibited side-by-side with those of today. What, for example, do we experience when a silent double portrait from the Danish Golden Age enters into a dialogue with a present-day video installation with a man and a woman talking away without listening?

The exhibition speaks to human feelings, and visitors will be able to enter an artistic/historical maze in a state of pleasant anticipation regarding which feeling is going to be triggered around the next corner.