Daan Roosegaarde’s latest artwork GROW is an homage to the beauty of agriculture. In the world film premiere of GROW a luminous dreamscape of red and blue waves of light appear over an enormous field. GROW is inspired by scientific light recipes which improve plants’ growth and resilience.

Most of the time, we hardly notice the vast areas of the Earth which are literally feeding us. GROW highlights the importance of innovation in the agriculture system: How can cutting-edge light design help plants grow more sustainably? How can we make the farmer the hero?

Winner of Global Future Design Awards 2021, Fast Company‘s Innovation by Design Award, People's Lovie Winner, World Design Awards 2021, MANA Global New Media Art, ADC Annual Awards, [d]arc Lighting Award London, Novum Design Award, and MUSE Design Award.

GROW consists of a design-based light recipe that shines vertically across 20,000m2 of farmland with leek (Allium porrum). You experience the artwork as ‘dancing lights’ across a huge agricultural field. The light is poetic, and inspired by photobiology light science technologies which have shown that certain recipes of blue, red, and ultraviolet light can enhance plant growth and reduce the use of pesticides by up to 50 per cent.

The film GROW shows the development of this luminous dreamscape and how the beauty of light can help plants. It is also a call for enlightenment during these dark times. GROW can be good for nature but also sends hopeful light to people. It gives a new meaning to the word ‘agri-culture’ by reframing the landscape as a living cultural artwork.

Wiebe Draijer, Chairman of the Managing Board, Rabobank: “It is really inspiring to work with an artist like Daan Roosegaarde on how to grow a better world together.”

Daan Roosegaarde: "GROW is a dreamscape showing the beauty of light and sustainability. Not as a utopia but as a protopia, improving step by step.”

Prof. Dr. Wargent, PhD, Chief Science Officer at BioLumic, world leading expert in plant photobiology: “The project GROW is a fascinating project and supported by scientific research which shows specific light recipes can enhance growth and reduce pesticide use up to 50%.”

GROW is part of the artist-in-residence program of Rabobank. Daan Roosegaarde and his team of designers and experts developed GROW over two years, informed by expert knowledge sessions at Studio Roosegaarde, Wageningen University & Research, Springtij Forum, and the World Economic Forum in Davos. It is the first in the DreamScapes series by Studio Roosegaarde which shows the beauty of combining art and science to create a better world.