The members of our project “Do Trees Dream of CO2” are meeting in Paris November 25-26 for a workshop to prepare for future performances. During these working days, artists will together investigate what happens to trees and humans at night and if the two can find a platform for nocturnal exchanges. The will look at new technology, new musical ideas and how trees and humans can benefit from these in the best of ways. They will particularly look at how the new EEGsynth applications affect their work. Below you find a description of the project.
Background
Biology has recently acquired important knowledge about plants and their perception and problem solving skills: how plants react to enhance their chances of survival when their surroundings change. In this project, artists and researchers from Denmark, Sweden and France investigate what artists can learn from this new and exciting knowledge, as well as how it can be used to create new music and visionary art.
Humans have traditionally ignored plants’ ability to solve problems. We have also been relatively blind to many of the similarities that we share with the vegetal life around us. But since we share the same planet and the same evolutionary past, we also share a lot of biochemistry. In biology much attention has recently been given to the agency of plants – how they sense the world and deal with changes in their environment. With this project we will investigate what implications the recent discoveries in biology have for the arts.
Concept and Technology
In the work we focus primarily on trees’ and their inner signalling. We use the PepiPIAF technology to measure changes in their inner. The technology is attached to a branch of a tree and measures the changes in pressure and temperature inside the actual tree, based on how water moves inside the tree. From these measurements we can derive information about how the tree grows and to a certain degree how it channels information. You can find more info about the PepiPIAF here. (In French only.)
In the project, we focus on making performances for smaller groups of visitors (6-10 people at the time.) We present the work in the evening and at night. Our main focus is on the nocturnal life of plants. We know that they rest at night, in similar way that animals do. But do they also dream? What is their nocturnal existence like? What similarities and differences can we find between them and us? In the performances the audience is invited to spend extended time with a tree and experience art based on the tree’s inner processes.
The Performances
We start by introducing the project and its artistic and scientific background. We then proceed to do make some group exercises that enables each visitor to leave their stressful day behind and at the same time come into sync with the plants, insects and animals around them. The audience then lie down in a circle with their heads facing the tree. They lie on specially designed carpets. Once they are relaxed they listen to sounds that are derived from the tree’s inner processes in real time. The sounds are ambient and developed to be meditative and soothing. The sounds are interspersed with periods of silence where the audience can listen to the surrounding life and focus on the tree. We also measure naturally occurring signals in the human nervous systems in real time using electroencephalogram (EEG). One of the members of the audience wears an EEG-cap that measures his/her brain activity on the scalp. We use the EEGsynth that Vision Forum has developed with neuroscientists since 2014. The measurements are turned into low frequency sounds and that are played for the tree’s root systems (where they are most sensitive to sound). Both the sounds of the human and of the tree are treated digitally using specially developed hardware and software.
The project creates a platform for possible exchanges between humans and trees. But more than anything, the project offers potential for the audience to reflect on similarities and differences in how humans’ and trees ‘ life processes are take shape and are expressed in the world.
Support and public presentation
Public presentations have been made at Earthwise in Denmark and more are planned at there, as well as at Teatermaskinen in Sweden as well as at Kuntsi Art museum in Vaasa summer 2023. The project is produced by Vision Forum and developed and realized in dialogue with Secret Hotel and Earthwise in Denmark, as well as with Morgondagens konstpublik in Sweden. Scientific support is provided by INRAE – UBP – Lycée Lafayette in France. It is supported by Kulturbryggan, Svenska kulturfonden and Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse.