From Punchdrunk creatives, ORIGIN immersive installation at Dunham Massey
Opening in May 2025 at Dunham Massey in Greater Manchester, ORIGIN is a site-specific immersive sound and light installation by Punchdrunk creatives Stephen Dobbie and Colin Nightingale, exploring nature’s rhythms through deep listening and sensory design.
A new immersive installation from two of Punchdrunk’s long-time creatives will open at Dunham Massey, a National Trust estate in Greater Manchester, inviting visitors to experience a meditative sound and light environment designed around deep listening and natural cycles.
From 3 May to 2 November 2025, visitors to the 18th-century house will enter a single darkened room and be encouraged to lie back, switch off, and listen. Created by Stephen Dobbie and Colin Nightingale, the project marks a quieter turn for two artists who helped shape some of Punchdrunk’s most influential productions, including Sleep No More and The Burnt City.
Billed as a “deep listening” experience, ORIGIN will unfold as a 30–40 minute cycle of spatialised sound and evolving light. Composed by Toby Young and delivered through a surround system by d&b Soundscape, the audio will draw from ambient tones and environmental recordings. Light sequences by Ben Donoghue will accompany the sonic landscape, shifting in response to its texture and pacing. There is no narrative arc, no performer – just a room, sound, and a recalibrated sense of time.
At the heart of the work is the Giant Himalayan Lily – a rare plant that spends years in quiet growth before blooming once and releasing its seeds. The installation takes this as both symbol and structure, offering a meditative space to consider growth, decay and renewal.
While an earlier version of ORIGIN appeared in London at World Heart Beat and during the London Design Festival in 2024, the new iteration has been reimagined for the architectural and botanical context of Dunham Massey. Research support from the team at Wakehurst, Kew’s wild garden in Sussex, and input from Goldsmiths College helped inform its development.
As arts institutions continue to explore sensory and participatory formats, ORIGIN reflects a growing interest in experiences that blur the line between installation and wellbeing. In place of spectacle, it offers stillness. In a post-pandemic cultural landscape where overstimulation is readily available, immersive quietude is becoming its own kind of draw.
Dobbie and Nightingale, working under the banner of A Right/Left Project, have spent recent years shifting toward more intimate sensory works. Their previous collaborations include Beyond the Road, a music-led installation created with James Lavelle of UNKLE and staged at Saatchi Gallery and later in Seoul, and The Retiring Room, a 20-minute sound immersion in a London hotel suite.
Entry to ORIGIN will be included in Dunham Massey’s standard park and garden admission, with limited places allocated daily via timed tokens. Sessions will run from 11am to 3pm, with entry tokens available from 9am at the Visitor Centre. The project is supported by the National Trust, Wakehurst, and Goldsmiths.
For full details and to plan your visit, you can find it listed here:
ORIGIN at Dunham Massey – National Trust
Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.