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 sound element was made up of two sets of recordings - the first was recording the inside of the four trees that frame the installation. In doing so we realised that 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, we also realised that trees also sense us before we sense them.
The second set was of the adjacent lake and forest location to create a piece where you couldn't quite tell where the edge of the experience was. The aim was for Pulse to melt into its surroundings so you felt part of the continuum and to pose the question : 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. Translated into pulses of light and haptic vibrations it creates an interplay between nature and technology - a dialogue between organic and digital. The work is designed to shift with the seasons and embodies Houghton's ethos of connection, experimentation and presence. Over time it becomes not just an installation, but a living monument.
Pulse consists of a 4.5m square wooden plinth that hovers above the forest floor, a light canopy above, quadraphonic sound that is tied literally and metaphorically to the four trees 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-8pm, and 'Night' between 8pm-8am) as a collective experience. The track you hear above is a section of the 'Night' track.
For the reactive element, seismic microphones near the entry stairs to the platform pick up approaching footsteps and translate that data into regionalised intensities of light in the canopy and thumps through the transducers which you feel through your whole body. So lying down, without moving your head, you are aware of people approaching and from which direction.
Looking up focuses visitors on the vertical rather than the horizontal, shifting our perspective, and the canopy above relates to our influence on the sky as well as the earth.
The captivating light sequences added by Oliver Ellmers deepen 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, and being aware of fellow visitors as part of a track's choreography changes how music can be interpreted. Each performance is unique but coherent, individual yet collective. We are looking forward to exploring these ideas further in future iterations.
Research to ascertain how far we could pick up human activity through a tree relative to above ground.
The first half of the video is the sound from the phone microphone, the second half is the sound through the seismic microphone plugged into the tree.
Best with headphones - listen to how much further the sound can be picked up through the ground. I used to be sceptical of the claim that elephants could communicate to each other up to 20 miles through the ground. No longer! The realisation that the surface of the forest and the internals of a tree function like a drum skin is obvious in hindsight, but it still engenders a sense of awe nonetheless! This helped galvanise the overall concept.
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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. EB-BA 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.