Site-specific installation, light interventions, interactive video game, LED screen, sound

[Benign Land was presented in the imposing Carlisle Memorial Church, Belfast, during pagan holiday Samhain, as part of the festival Red Sky at Night. Combining light installation with an interactive gaming environment, the work extends the artist’s long-standing research into perception, architecture, and light through the medium of video games.]

Experienced at the threshold of Samhain — when the veil between worlds is said to thin — the installation evokes passage into the Otherworld. Inside a dark deconsecrated church two light interventions frame a large LED wall, in which viewers navigate a twilight landscape that interweaves history, folklore, literature, and music of Ireland — drifting from pagan myth to recent political events, including the Troubles. The experience evokes a dreamlike passage through the island’s subconscious, where multiple narratives and temporal layers coexist.

The landscapes of Benign Land are constructed from 3D photogrammetry models captured by the artist across Ireland. Sites of myth, industry, politics, and literature are reconfigured into fictional terrains that can be navigated with a controller, allowing plural narratives and perspectives to unfold. The soundscape, composed by Belfast-based artist John D’Arcy from fragments of keening, local instruments, and poetry, extends the work’s atmosphere, tracing faint echoes from the other side of the veil.

Collaborators:

Sound Design: John D’Arcy
VFX: Anna Chocholi
Engineering: Bram Vreven

Benign Land was commissioned for Red Sky at Night by Household Belfast, with support from Belfast City Council, British Council Northern Ireland, and the Mondriaan Fund. Additional support was provided by Visual Spectrum Studios and Belfast Buildings Trust.

The interactive experience of Benign Land is also available worldwide on the gaming platform Steam, extending the work beyond its site-specific origin.