by Patrick Fetherstonhaugh
 
Continuing their longstanding commitment to combining art, music, and nature, Houghton Festival announces new large-scale art commissions by light artist Chris Levine, and by experimental architecture studio EBBA.
 
“from the outset Houghton has always been an arts and music festival” - festival curator and founder Craig RichardsBenni Allan’s award-winning London-based architecture studio EBBA’s new installation “Pulse” (above) is set among the trees and converts the bio-electric signals of the forest into light and sound - allowing the natural setting to dictate the speed and procession of the changing outputs. Pulse is set to be a permanent part of Houghton’s art collection and will remain in place after the Festival, designed specifically to evolve naturally alongside the landscape and the forest in which it is sited and whose life it interprets.
 

 
Levine (above left) - who had a solo exhibition at Houghton Hall in 2021 - returns for the Festival with three pieces, including a laser beam that will stretch across the entire site, working with Ley lines and cosmic geometry to connect visitors to the surroundings. He has also created tiny poetic “moments” that will be projected fleetingly throughout the woods, and will debut an illuminated VW Campervan floating in the middle of the estate’s lake (above right), to provide a kinetic light sculpture at the heart of everything.

“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”
 

Houghton Festival is at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, UK from the 7th to the 10th of August.