We usually just walk past the trees of Arnhem. They seem pretty regular to us and if we notice them at all, they always look the same whether yesterday, today or tomorrow. Our houses are made with wood. Trees also give us medicine, food, warmth, oxygen and we seek their shade during hot summers.
During ‚Arnhemse Bomen Vertellen‘, you will meet trees as you meet a work of art. The three parks of Sonsbeekpark, Zijpendaal and Gulden Bodem are home to very special and old trees.
You will get to know the intimate life of the Solitary Oak in the Moerasweide, the Horse Chestnut near the Witte Villa, the European Oak on the way to the Belvedere Tower, one of the Red Beeches near Zypendaal Castle, one of the Gatekeepers at Gulden Bodem, and a Douglas Fir in Schaarsbergen-Zuid.
Using sensors installed in six trees, ‚Arnhemse Bomen Vertellen‘ makes visible what is otherwise hidden from the human eye: the mouvements of the trunk, the CO2 and water supply, the temperature in the air and at the roots, and the amount of sunlight that helps the trees in their photosynthesis. From hour to hour, you can see changes in the trunk of the tree. The installation invites you to appreciate these special trees as active, growing, changing living beings, beings you can enter into a relationship with.
Near each of the trees, a wooden bench has been placed with a QR code on it. These benches are made of wood from trees of Arnhem. By scanning the QR code you will be guided to a web page where story fragments, an artistic soundscape and digital images will provide insight into the life and history of the tree. What you get to see and hear depends on your location and the data sent by the sensors. Let yourself be surprised every hour, every day.
(An Mertens)
From mid June to mid December 2024, you could meet the above described Arnhem trees while walking in the park. The trees were equipped with sensors to measure data, that was transcribed into graphics and sound. Depending on which data was collected, certain sounds were triggered and mixed in real time. The images and sounds you can see and listen to below are a documentation only, the sounds were not composed to be listened looking at a screen, but while walking in the forest meeting specific trees. You may look at the images of the portraited tree while listening to the compositions and imagine being outside, or go out and take a walk in the parc while listening to the music, meeting another tree, feeling the wind or the sun on your cheek and smelling the humidity of the soil, or its dryness.
The instruments I used were not tuned in common harmonics schemes: sometimes, they are out of tune or played in uncommon ways. I tried to imagine how the horizontal growing of the solitary oak, for instance, could sound like, heard from the inside of the tree, or the exchange of CO2 between the tree and the air around it.
(Christina Clar)
This art project was created by Anaïs Berck, a collective of people, trees and algorithms: An Mertens (concept, coordination, tree whisperer), Gijs de Heij & Doriane Timmermans (code, design & visualizations – Open Source Publishing), Christina Clar (sound), Bram Goots (photos), Loïc Lachaize (mastering), Floris van Hintum (benches/stand), Patrick Lennon & Karin Ulmer (proofreading)
cover photo: Bram Goots
