This 18-metre-high light installation was created by Dutch designer Dennis Parren for the Lowlands music festival in The Netherlands (+ movie).

Built from a metal scaffolding framework and covered in evenly spaced steel cables and triangular fabric panels, the Lift tower was designed to function as a central meeting point for the three-day festival's 48,000 revellers.

A computer-controlled platform housed at the centre of the structure used four LEDs to generate over 1,000 watts of light, and moved up and down the middle of the tower to create shifting light and shadow effects on the external panels.

Taking around a week to complete, the project came with a set of specific challenges according to Parren – from the safety of the festival-goers, to the structure's ability to withstand weather conditions.

The central platform's LEDs needed to be well ventilated, as well as protected from the damp to ensure the sculpture still worked in wet conditions.

"The LED platform had to able to move, be rigged very precisely, be programmable, calibrated to the structure, and emit enough light to ensure that we would have sharp coloured shadows on the banners," the designer explained.

"We've tested this in our studio beforehand, as finding bright lights isn't a problem, but creating sharp coloured shadows is."

Lowlands festival director Eric van Eerdenburg was originally intrigued by Parren's CMYK light bulb – which combined a white light source with coloured LEDs to cast shadows in cyan, magenta and yellow – and commissioned the designer to create something similar on a larger scale.

"With this we continue to tell stories about light and how magical and mysterious it is," Parren said. "Most people don't think about light, most even don't know how light works, or know why the sky is blue, or that the sunlight is build up out of multiple colours."

"This tells the story of the CMYK lamp to a whole new audience," he added.

Although the structure has now been disassembled, Parren told Dezeen it could be rebuilt again at next year's Lowlands, or another music festival.

Austrian arts collective Neon Golden combined light and movement in an installation that mimicked the movements of fireflies, while Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde's Waterlicht installation used LEDs to create wavy lines of light that would give the impression of a "virtual flood".