Pulse is a multi-sensory immersive installation that aims to deepen our relationship to the environment by connecting us through our immediate surroundings rather than taking us elsewhere, asking how our environment may sense us.
It has both defined and ambiguous edges. At what point do we meet our surroundings? Or are they already within us?
At Houghton, Pulse has been designed as a place to pause, reconnect and revive.
The elevated structure invites visitors to sit beneath a sculptural canopy and above the forest floor.
Every tree has its own voice: different densities, pitches and sizes make them as unique as our own. Due to the density of the ground, trees also sense us before we sense them. What would it be like to sense the world a little more like a tree might?
The installation investigates this dialogue through our collective movements that are then translated into pulses of light and haptic vibrations creating an interplay between nature and technology. The work is designed to shift with the seasons and embodies Houghton's ethos of connection, experimentation and presence, creating a lasting dialogue between the organic and the digital.
Over time, it becomes not just an installation, but a living monument - an ongoing dialogue between art, technology, and the natural world.
Exploring the question with Benni, we decided to utilise sound recordings of the surrounding trees, lake and forest. We wanted to investigate what trees sense, their individual voices and processes and our relationships to them and the wider environment.
It consists of a 4.5m square wooden plinth, a light canopy above, quadraphonic sound that is tied literally and metaphorically to the four trees that frame the installation and bass transducers that create haptics on the surface that are best experienced lying down. Together they extend the dimensions of the 2 x 20 minute pieces (day between 8am and 8pm and night between 8pm and 8am) as a collective experience. The track you hear above is a section of the night track.
Looking up focuses visitors on the vertical rather than the horizontal, shifting our perspectives, and the canopy above reminds us of our influence through sky as well as earth.
The beautiful light sequences that Oliver Ellmers has added deepens the sense of scale and the interplay between our digital foregrounds and the analogue background.
Being able to transmit music and sound through haptics as well as well as through the air completely changes how music can be interpreted. We are looking forward to exploring this further in future iterations.
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Commissioned by the Houghton Festival in 2025, Pulse is a permanent addition to the site, converting the energies of the surrounding environment into shifting light and sound. EBBA are known for their experimental approach to space-making with a sensitivity to material and context. They exist at the intersection between architecture, art, and emotion.
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Bass transducers, aerial speakers, seismic microphones that pick up human activity through the ground and movement reactive lighting.