Jonas Johansson (b. 1987) is a designer, artist, educator and speaker from Glommen, Halland. He studied graphic design in Norrköping, Reims, and Stockholm, and has worked at leading design studios in Tokyo, Montreal, London and Munich. He taught visual communication at Beckmans (2017–2025), and facilitated learning journeys at Hyper Island (2014–2022).
Jonas runs the artist residency Visualia, plans courses at Svenska Tecknare, and shares his studio with SMASH and Rose Hallgren. He is a part of PLX, a Svartljus artist and is currently organising Dome Dreaming and Ode Joy.
Emerging Sensation
An interactive installation combining smart textiles and augmented reality, 25 metres below ground in a retired nuclear reactor hall.
Emerging Sensation took over Reaktorhallen R1, the old reactor hall underneath KTH in Stockholm, for several weeks in January 2019. Malin Bobeck Tadaa initiated the project and brought me in alongside Really Interactive game studio. Malin had perfected a technique using optic fibre and custom 3D-printed parts to weave LED strips directly into her textile sculptures. Conductive thread woven into the fabric gave the sculptures capacitive touch, so when visitors touched them, the light animations shifted and a signal was sent to the HoloLens AR layer.
I built the light animations on Arduino and a node-based OSC system that bridged the physical sculptures and the HoloLens. Björn Albihn and Jonatan Crafoord at Really Interactive built the mixed reality side. I spent days and nights in that reactor hall, listening to System of a Down and going slightly insane.
