Before Us There Was Forest

1 minute animated video, 1656 x 1024, 24 fps

Photographs of Louisiana skyscapes, seascapes, moonlit trees, and street lamps become a journey through a forest world.

"All of life at first is a long sleep, a long dream. You fall asleep at the moment you are born, and never wake up, never wake up until finally one day the dream beast calls you. You go then, into the forest, sometimes only a few steps, sometimes to the edge of the world. You go until you meet the beast who calls you. The beast is not in a dream. The beast wakes you up from the dream. The beast shows you who you are, teaches you your place in the land. Then you go home awake, awake at last, and tell the shaman and your mother and your sisters who the dream beast was. A bear? A badger? A bird? A fish? A hawk or an eagle? A bee or a wasp? The shaman will tell you stories and help you choose your woke-up name. Your mother and sisters will name all your children, whether they have been born yet or not."

-- Orson Scott Card, Red Prophet, quoted with permission

“We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.”

—Barbara Ward

“As I walk with Beauty

As I walk, as I walk,

The universe is walking with me,

In beauty it walks before me,

In beauty it walks behind me,

In beauty it walks below me,

In beauty it walks above me,

Beauty is on every side.”

—Traditional Navajo Prayer

“We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.”

― Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History

I often begin with photographs or hand-painted images, and then I may use image processing or artificial intelligence processes to transform them into beautiful organic mysteries.

-- Carl Fravel https://fravel.net/art