Suwannee Hulaween 2023

I have been attending Suwannee Hulaween every year since 2014 and have always wanted to contribute. For 2023 I submitted 6 separate proposals with 6 separate ideas because I was determined to be a part of the 10th Hulaween. I landed with a piece that I had originally titled “Portal Haze” and later renamed to “Prism Portal” to make sure people in various states of intoxication would be able to find the correct name on the Hulaween app in case they went searching. Because what is life as an artist these days without spending a bunch of extra energy to make sure you’ve got a presence on social media. #merica

At the 2021 event I learned that Spirit Lake is actually a very deep sinkhole, dropping around 200ft straight down into the aquifer. The concept for “Portal Haze” stems from this, below is the “intended impact” from the 2023 application:

As water gets deeper, as in the depths of Spirit Lake, different parts of the color spectrum are slowly blocked out, one color at a time the colors of the rainbow are removed – red first and following OYGBIV in that order. During the daylight hours the whole piece will look like some kind of deconstructed Pink Floyd album cover, a prism with split-light captured and manipulated further. But it’s not. It’s the remnants of intergalactic visitors and the portal they once used to visit our plane.

These portals are not possible everywhere, but SOSMP and Spirit Lake specifically happen to sit perfectly atop an energy vortex. At night, illuminated with a specialty instrument, the bending of space and time is apparent as light is twisted and ripped apart for everyone to see as it swirls in and out of this vortex along not-yet-understood colored lines. Scientists are calling the effect “portal haze” until a more technical term is coined.

I had a great time with this one, even though I was literally shaking for the first couple days because I was so on edge. Hulaween is usually one of the most fun events of the year so I wanted to live up to the level of everyone else.

I used my custom-built UV laser to have a lot of fun with this piece. If viewed from the open side at the correct angle viewers could see the pattern being projected, but it was skewed at other angles. I used this to add some halloween-themed animations into the show. At times a laughing jack-o-lantern would appear for about two minutes, long enough for someone to look over and see it, but maybe not long enough for them to grab their friends and get them into the right position to see it too before the effect changes.

Another effect added was a spooky face, similar to the character Hades from the Disney Movie Hercules.

 

And it all comes down.