Light in the Forest 2025

“Flora Fauna and Phosphorescence”

This installation uses animal silhouettes programmed into two UV lasers which are projecting onto multiple glow-in-the-dark 4’x4′ plywood panels painted with phosphorescent (glow-in-the-dark) paint.

The yearly theme for Light in the Forest at the Cincinnati Nature Center asked for native plants/animals from the region as the primary inspiration. I collected animal calls for several creatures, including a coyote, sandhill crane, cricket, turkey, red-tailed hawk, cardinal, bobcat, and spring peepers (frogs), created animations, and then synched those animations up to recordings of their respective real-world animal calls. I created all the animations myself from actual animal videography wherever possible (bobcat videos were difficult to find because they’re elusive). This all had to be drawn frame-by-frame so each instance of movement had to be exported and re-imported into the laser software where the animation was recreated. The entire process was laborious and took several weeks.

The most difficult part of the whole piece was working through limitations of the technology I chose to use. I used a DMX recorder to run both of the lasers as well as the audio. However, I found that the audio didn’t automatically restart when the cue sequence ended and restarted. The audio had to be edited down to the millisecond, and then the whole piece had to be allowed to run for an hour or more to see if the adjustment was accurate-enough to allow the piece to run for 5-8 hours per night without misaligning slowly.

The smear effect as the shapes move across the glow panels is wonderful. I plan to explore this entire concept further as well as the ability to play with the “memory” of the glow paint to create layered designs.

 

The piece was quite popular during the event and gathered small crowds as people watched to see the entire cycle of animals over the course of a few minutes.

 

I had a very unusual experience while programming the lasers on site. I was completely alone in the park, the caretaker had gone to bed already and at this point it was about 1 a.m. I had my headphones half on listening to some music when I suddenly heard a terrifying and very loud bone-rattling, shake-you-to-the core shriek from within 100′ of me. A chill went down my spine as every hair on my body stood on end as I took off my headphones to get a better idea of what just happened. At this point I had my laptop and various devices all out and plugged into each other, so simply grabbing the important things and running to the car was not an option. I grew up on a 180-acre farm in Kentucky, I’ve heard a lot of strange sounds in the night, but I’d NEVER heard something like this.

Let’s back up a bit. The previous year I did an installation in the exact same location for Light in the Forest and had another strange experience happen late at night when I was also alone. With that experience I could hear some kind of creature seemingly laughing/giggling in response to the lights on my glow mushroom installation turning on and off every 15-20 seconds. That sounded like a very breathy laugh, somewhere between a hyena and a monkey. That sound was strange, continued for maybe 30 or so minutes, seemed to be coming from within at most 30′-50′ of me (which would have put it almost within my installation), and had no sounds before or after to suggest a creature walking/flying in or walking/flying away. That previous sound was also much, much quieter than the sound I heard this time. The sound I heard this time was shocking and terrifying, especially given that I was completely alone in the middle of the night. It’s also worth noting that I had originally hoped to have one panel deep in the woods to have a Sasquatch outline walk by occasionally, as a little easter egg, but ultimately had to cut it for budget and time reasons. So at this point my mind was racing in many directions.

As I sat there with my headlamp on as the only form of light I had, I could hear the thing that made the shriek begin moving. Leaves and dead tree branches crunched as this creature walked slowly in the dark night. From where I was sitting, the original source of the sound was seemingly within about 100′ of me, but was hard to tell since I had headphones on at first. As it began to move, it walked more or less parallel to my installation and got within 50′-75′ of where I was sitting. My view of the woods was obscured by the 4’x4′ plywood panels that were part of my installation, but as this thing moved it ended up in a location that was essentially directly across my installation from my position. I leaned over, hoping to see something in the woods between the plywood panels with the help of my headlamp, and looked directly toward the source of the sound. Suddenly the creature turned its head and looked directly at me. I could not see anything in the darkness except the light of my headlamp reflecting off a pair of large eyes. The reflected color in the eyes was a bright ORANGE, something I’d never seen before. I stood up, waved my arms around and made some noise by yelling. The creature immediately began running away from me and quickly I no longer heard it moving. I did not hear any more shrieks after that point, but was on high alert for the remaining hour or so that I was still there finishing tasks and packing up.

What could have possibly made that sound, I wondered. While researching animal calls I kept seeing mentions that bobcats can sometimes make sounds that resembles a woman screaming in the woods, but I never found any recordings that accurately seemed to fit that description. That information was in the back of my mind when I heard this shriek, and when I saw the eyes of the creature they appeared to be quite close to the ground, which is why I immediately made some loud noises to scare the creature away. I was not sure it was a bobcat, and if the eyes had been 9ft off the ground then I would have likely scampered to my vehicle immediately, but at this time that’s my best guess. When bringing this experience up to the Cincy Nature Center staff they were equally as shocked. To their knowledge, nobody on staff has ever seen a bobcat on the property, though the property is admittedly large at 1800 acres. The property general manager Ryan, who had been in that position for 10+ years, told me his predecessor used to sometimes have difficulties sleeping and would occasionally come to the park in the early hours of the day so get started on work. Ryan said this predecessor reported hearing a bobcat once during an early arrival to the park (around 4am), but beyond that nobody had every known for a bobcat to be on the property. I did a little research after the experience and found that different animals have different reflectivity of colors in their eyes and bobcats are known to have eyes that reflect yellow, orange and amber colors.

Hard to be sure about anything without some further confirmation, but yeah. Not the most comforting experience.

The video below has the sounds of a bobcat. The first shriek is very close to what I heard, but the end of the sound in this video had a low-pitched section at the end and the sound I heard did not have that. It was only high-pithed, gravelly, shrill and then ended with no further sounds except for the rustling of the leaves as it moved.