As dusk settles and night approaches, we walk into the darkening woodland. At the edge of the path woven figures slip into silhouettes cloaking themselves in the woodland from which they were made. A torch becomes essential and when found these figures move into the foreground, somehow more solid, more real than they were in daylight. In the darkened woodland, torch-lit, they have a demanding surreal reality. They leap out grabbing your attention, whispering old stories to your subconscious.
Somewhere to the side of the path and beyond the impassible understory a strange soundscape echoes through the trees. Sounds both of and extending beyond, the woodland drift into and out of rhythmic patterns of the wind and swaying trees, voices that are heard yet not understood, impose themselves on the hooting owls of the woodland night.
We continue to walk finding more figures, a tangle of light brightens a tree to the side of the pathway directing you towards the strange sounds. Small pools of light, and torches hanging from the trees, guide you. In an opening of old coppiced oak, groups gather around a large screen that is viewable from both sides. The screen is suspended from a horizontal oak limb higher than you can reach and longer than you are tall, a limb that appears briefly on-screen before the camera passes under it.
The sounds of creaking trees and woodland workers bounce around the space. The space itself echoes and is made bright upon the screen. The darkened woodland of the open area and the darker woodland closing in around the edges feel surreal and full of strange and fantastic stories whispered from childhood.
The bright sunlit images on the screen move through a 3D digital construct of the physical space in which we stand. Somehow this projected space constantly moves between feeling more real and more comfortably surreal than the physical space in which we stand. The dark woodland surrounds us.
The video of the 3D digital space at the end of a trail of lit pathways is a small piece of temporal magic, always difficult to catch. It now exists for those lucky enough to be there as a surreal memory.
The woven figures of the art trail built in July and August still exist at the end of September. Still, they are already decaying back into the underlying layer of vegetation of the woodland. At the end of October, some pieces will be removed and, who knows, some elements will still form Lines in the Highwoods in years to come for those who have the eyes to see.