In Pure Spirit

For open minds

The mystery of the Crooked Forest

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The Crooked Forest is as strange as it is beautiful. Growing in Poland, just outside of Nowe Czarnowo, there’s some 400 weirdly bent trees.

These photographs from Kilian Schönberger reveal the alien trees.

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No one is quite sure how – or why – these trees are bent like this. People may have persuaded them to grow this way, using tools and techniques, so the wood from them would be better suited to boat building or furniture but that’s speculation. Fire, flood and other natural events like heavy snowstorms that might have weighed down young trees are also suggested.

The truth is – we haven’t yet solved this riddle.

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What do you think caused the Crooked Forest?

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What’s the strangest unsolved mystery that you know about today?

What would make the ground breathe like this?

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This video isn’t the best quality but clearly shows the earth rising up and down almost as if the forest itself was breathing.

There are some theories ranging from water running beneath the soil, to heavy winds causing the roots to tug at loose earth all the way to escaping gas. Strange underground creature? Some people have suggested that too.

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What do you think would cause the ground to heave like that?

Weird 3D woodland animal spirit

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This interesting animation is popular on Tumblr. I can’t trace it further than that. It shows a woodland spirit, some sort of monster, or perhaps a fairy from the night court and uses a flickering motion to give a 3D effect.

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Looking for art and inspiration? Try Art.com or Art Republic.

Do you have any favourite animated gifs? Any pictures that make you think of the spirit and creatures we should remember? Share the images and links in the comments below!

Starts off silly but there’s a horrible twist in this Doritos ad

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Did you watch the video? Maybe you took a look at the thumbnail and figured this was an ad for Doritos. It’s not. It really isn’t.

This is an ad that urges people to persuade Doritos and PepsiCo, the company that owns the brand, to help protecet the rainforest and orangutans.

The problem is palm oil. It’s possible to get palm oil ethically and you can see examples of companies who do so over at Ethical Consumer but most companies don’t. PepsiCo buys 427,500 tonnes of palm oil ever year. Demand is on the increase. It’s expected to double by 2030 and to keep growing. It’s worth noting that Pepsico try pretty hard to source their palm oil ethically.

Palm oil harvesting doesn’t just kill rainforests it kills endangered animals like orangutans who live in the environment.

Palm oil has different names. Don’t be fooled

  • Palm oil can be called Palm oil kernel
  • Palm oil is sometimes called “Palmitate” or “Palmate”
  • Palm oil is also known as Elaeis gunieensis
  • Palm oil can be labelled as Hydrated Palm Gylcerides Hexadecanoic
  • Palm oil can be described as Palmitic Acid

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Are you worried about palm oil being used in any of the products you love?

Do you think videos like this are helpful? Or is simply collecting names online a worthless activity? Since Pepsico makes some effort to ethically source palm oil would SumOfUs not be better picking a different target?

If you’d like to learn more then pop over to the Sum Of Us campaign page.

Projection mapping creates a forest wonderland

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There are no special effects in this video. Have a look.

What’s going on? If there are no special effects applied to this video when there do all the glowing lights come from?

This is an art project. The glow comes from the forest. It’s not all natural. The most striking effects are projection mapping – in other words; tightly focused, bright lights that are shone onto the woodland.

Created by Friedrich van Schoor and Tarek Mawad the project took six weeks in the forest to complete. You can read more about it at Bioluminescent-Forest.com.

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Tempted by a trip or even a holiday in the woods now? Solutions like English Country Cottages, Explore! for action holidays, woodland lodges from Hoseasons, Haven or even National Trust membership to grant you access to some superb wild areas are good.

Gretel’s Dark Forest

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German artist Kilian Schoenberger shared their Dark Forest photography project on Behance. It’s described as “back into the light” this is “where Hansel and Gretel lost their way”.

The photographs were actually taken by wandering through the remote forests that line where the Iron Curtain in Central Europe used to be. We’ve pictures from Germany and the Czech Republic in the set.

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Which forests would you recommend for fantastic photography? Have you any holiday or flights to Germany tips to share?

Disclosure

This blog discusses ideas and causes. Urban myth and history combine here. In Pure Spirit covers stories from elsewhere on the web and may make fair use clippings and quotations from the original source.