Specht Studio

‘Human Resonance’ is a new self-initiated piece, premiered exclusively at Us By Night (Sept. 27, 2025 - Antwerp, Belgium) and Forward Festival (Oct. 3, 2025 - Vienna, Austria). It’s a seven-chapter visual meditation that delves into the inner world of being human — especially the creative and playful side of our nature. Each chapter unfolds its own distinct identity and typographic language, forming a rhythm between visuals, type, and emotion. The entire soundscape is generated from a fig tree using the bioelectrical device PlantWave which measures the subtle changes in a plant’s electrical currents - the shifts that happen as water moves through its tissues, as ions flow across cell membranes, and as the plant responds to its environment. Those fluctuations become data, and that data becomes sound, which then is composed to a music piece through choices of scale, frequency, and instrumentation. The fig tree’s music is tuned to 432 Hz, a frequency often associated with natural harmony and resonance, inviting a grounded and balanced state of being. Over the course of four minutes, visuals, sound, and typography merge into a short yet immersive meditation. The work places strong emphasis on typography, culminating in a credit sequence that acknowledges all the typefaces and foundries used.

We created Human Resonance for one simple reason: to invite to reconnect with ourselves — to have something to return to in stressful times, and to rediscover joy in color, type, sound, and motion. All the ingredients that make us, as creative beings, feel truly alive.

•⁠ ⁠MOTION & GRAPHICS Vincent van Lieshout, Stephanie Specht
•⁠ ⁠MUSIC Karolien Polenus
•⁠ ⁠TEXT Vincent van Lieshout, Stephanie Specht and Karolien Polenus
•⁠ ⁠VOICE Hannah Gardiner

Stephanie Specht (°1982) is a Belgian graphic designer who has worked independently since 2006, after graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Her career, shaped by experiences in cities such as Cape Town, Brussels, Princeton, and New York, reflects a continual pursuit of freedom and reinvention. Guided by intuition, Stephanie’s work blends clarity with experimentation and has led to collaborations with clients including Google Design, Nike, and Dazed. She frequently works with clients in the fields of music, architecture, and culture — sectors that align with her multidisciplinary approach. Drawn to the exploratory phase of design, she values the space where ideas can unfold without boundaries. Personal projects form an integral part of her practice, functioning as a playground for creative discovery. Beyond her studio, Stephanie regularly shares her vision through talks, workshops, and exhibitions around the world.
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Vincent van Lieshout (°1998) is a motion designer, currently working at Studio Dumbar. His mixed roots fuel a fascination with opposites—order and chaos, emotion and structure, intuition and system—and how they can live together in one clear form. Working across typography, identities, and abstract visuals, Vincent searches for the story that gives each piece its reason to exist. For him, design is a way to understand experience—to turn what moves him into something that moves others. He believes good design begins with awareness: of what you make, who you make it for, and who you are while making it. The more honest the designer, the truer the work.
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Karolien Polenus (°1979), known as NiXiE, is a sound artist, performer, and curator with a deep-rooted passion for sound and transformation and has a background in cultural anthropology. Based in Brussels for the last two decades, she is celebrated for her eclectic sets and refined ‘digging’ style, and as a curator, providing a platform for numerous underground artists. As a sound artist, she creates immersive sonic landscapes and ritual performances, exploring the intersection of nature, spirituality, and alchemy, using sound as a transformative medium. As a sound healer and energy practitioner, she guides individuals and groups through deep sonic experiences, dissolving the boundaries between art, music, and expanded states of consciousness. Her multidisciplinary practice reflects an ongoing exploration of sound’s transformative power.
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