An enchanted mystical terrarium brought to life with projection mapping and stop-motion animation, The Relic of Mirchwood was commissioned in 2025 as a SHINE commission by Light Up The North. Created by Laura Spark, the technical objective of The Relic was to design a unique way to use projection in a free standing sculpture to present animated worlds to light festival audiences.
The Relic aims to gently encourage appreciation for climate and conservation themes, celebrating the natural world through an experience with a fantastical object presenting plant life as magical, divine and very much alive.
Here reside the last living ferns of Mirchwood; an ancient mythical forest driven to extinction purely by being forgotten. As its stories stopped being told, its trees vanished one by one. Now all that remains is protected in an enchanted terrarium, a living shrine to the primordial wisdom of plant life. The ferns of Mirchwood unfurl over and over, bearing a message of hope and survival from another realm.
The sculpture stands at 2.2 metres tall, 1.5 metres wide. She has 9 perspex surfaces projected onto from 2 projectors inside a solid wooden base. The base also contains a PA speaker playing an original musical score by Jonathan Hering.
For me this was an exciting way to explore presenting stop motion animation and narrative content in unusual contexts. I love that light festivals are attended by such large, diverse crowds and I wanted to bring more hand crafted content and storytelling into a very technical art form, offering audiences a more intimate and unusual experience.
Quotes from audience –
“Quite different to other things I’ve seen at the festival, its quite calming and intriguing, I want to watch it over and over again to see different parts of it”
“Its kind of like a living lava lamp”
“Love it, really getting into moss and ferns as I get older”
The Relic has so far appeared at
- Light Night Leeds 2025
- Light Up Wakefield 2025
- Nightfall Middlesbrough 2025
- Lightwaves, Salford 2025
- Illuminate Oldham 2026
- Our City as part of Colliderfest Hull, 2026
Available for 2026/27 bookings!