Maciej Korsan

Ambient Totems

co-creator and co-initiator; designed and hand-built the technology and electronics; up to 500 visitors a day on weekends

  • installation,
  • sound,
  • hardware,
  • public space
A row of black wooden totems topped with small solar panels along a path in Zwierzyniecki Forest

Ten wooden totems stand along the forest stretch of the Ambient Alley in Zwierzyniecki Forest, Białystok. Knock on one and it wakes up and lights up. Scan its code and you get ambient music mixed with the sounds of the woods around you. I’m a co-creator and one of the people behind the idea, and the technology was my part: the concept, the electronics, the software and the 3D-printed parts.

I’d had the idea for a few years: totems linked to a website where you could listen to ambient and learn something about the place. With the Up To Date Festival team we grew it into something you trigger on the spot, applied to KPO dla Kultury – the culture strand of Poland’s National Recovery Plan – and got the grant, which funds the project in full. The city let us put the totems in the forest part of the alley. They’ve been running since March 2026 and officially opened on 31 March.

A totem shot from below against bare treetops, with a metal plate showing a knocking-hand pictogram

How it works

Karolina Maksimowicz shaped the totems together with Marek Doroszkiewicz, a local woodworker. They’re cut from structural beams of Podlasie wooden houses more than a hundred years old. The wood is charred and treated with wood tar and birch tar, which is where the deep black comes from.

Inside each totem is hand-soldered electronics running on a solar panel. The panel is the only off-the-shelf component; everything else was built by hand for this installation, and I designed and 3D-printed every part that isn’t wood. There are no cables outside – it’s all sealed inside the totem.

  • Knock. Knock on a special plate and the totem lights up. I call that light the totem’s heart.
  • Colour. Each totem has its own colour. When several people knock on different totems at the same time, the totems swap colours wirelessly – it looks like they’re talking to each other.
  • QR and NFC. The code on a totem opens ambientowa.pl, which changes with the time of day and the season: eight combinations, eight walks. Each one has an hour-long ambient set, texts by biologist Aleksandra Staszak about what’s happening in Zwierzyniecki Forest at that time, and a few eco-minded notes. Best heard on headphones with noise cancelling off, so the music blends with the birds.
Part of a totem with a QR code, a glowing pink light panel and a knock pictogram; an Up To Date Festival scarf reading AMBIENT hangs beside it
A totem at dusk with its red light on, standing on a concrete base next to a forest path

In the workshop

Below: the ten sets of electronics before installation, light modules switched on, a printed light housing, and a small display reading AMBIENT TOTEM MASTER.

Ten electronics boxes and ten 3D-printed panels with LED rings laid out on a wooden floor
A row of lit light modules in different colours next to black plates with a knock pictogram
A black 3D-printed panel with a round milky light diffuser
A small blue display reading AMBIENT TOTEM MASTER with ID, WAKE and KNOCK columns
A phone showing ambientowa.pl in its Winter – Day variant, playing a set by Mateusz Grzybowski

Reception

People showed up before anyone announced the opening. I can see the stats: on the weekend of 21–22 March more than a hundred people scanned the codes on Saturday, and more than five hundred visited the site on Sunday. By the end of March around 500 people a day were using the totems at weekends, fewer on weekdays, depending on the weather. Polish Radio Białystok, where I talked about the project as one of its initiators, reported the same number.

That same weekend someone wrecked part of the installation. They ripped the solar panel off one totem, tore out its box and stole the electronics, and broke the knock plates on others. Most of the damage has been repaired and extra protection added.

Credits

  • Project: Up To Date Festival (run by the Pogotowie Kulturalno-Społeczne association)
  • Team: Maciej Korsan, Karolina Maksimowicz, Jędrzej Dondziło
  • Totem form: Karolina Maksimowicz with Marek Doroszkiewicz
  • Nature texts: Aleksandra Staszak (Faculty of Biology, University of Białystok)
  • Music: Olga Markowska, Botanica, Vi, Dtekk, Mateusz Grzybowski, Eta Hox, Daniel Szlajnda, Michał Wolski
  • Technology concept, electronics, software, 3D parts: Maciej Korsan
  • Funding: Polish National Recovery Plan (NextGenerationEU)

Sources

All in Polish.

ambientowa.pl