a tree full of wishes |
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AbstractThe annual rings, on the top of an upright tree trunk, are equipped with sensors. These allow historical information, to be accessed by viewers in acoustic form. Thus, the tree trunk presents viewers with an acoustic topography ordered by its lifetime. |
The project «Contemporary Witness», use the imagery of time shown by the annual rings and combine this imagery with the history of the developing gay movement at the beginning of the 20th century in Germany. The installation tries to commemorate the past, as we are used at memorial spaces. Historical events, political and social, were appropriately assigned to the annual rings. The documentary acoustic excerpts showed the rise of the gay movement also like the progression of violence and the changes in Germany until 1943 and included the chopping down of the tree, the death of contemporary witnesses. The rise of the gay movement was shown in the form of excerpts and chanson, the Holocaust and violence in the form of original speeches and songs from the Third Reich. The work was inspired by an advertisement for a new memorial space in Berlin, Germany, to commemorate the persecution of homosexuals during the Third Reich. The memorial was established in 2003 by the Federal Diet of Germany. Unfortunately there is no documentation video for this content, for demonstration of the interface please see the video documentation of the content «a tree full of wishes».
The content for «a tree full of wishes» was produced for the international art exhibition «The Free Will - 20 Years Glasnost». The exposition took part in a bunker placed at a former death row in Berlin, Germany.
Here the tree trunk provide viewers with an acoustic topography of «life’s wishes» sorted by the age of people. The first ring corresponds to the wish of a one- year-old, the twentieth ring to that of a twenty- year-old, etc. Thus the tree trunk presents viewers with an acoustic topography of «life’s wishes» I collected from people of various ages. Hereby I consider desires of crucial importance in connection with the theme of «free will» – what distinguishes desire from will? Are our desires not the driving force behind our actions? Life – symbolized by the tree – as a condensed succession of dreams, utopias, wishes, desires, and disappointments.
I began my work by trying to discover different marks of time, as multifaceted as they are in nature. Natural formations in rock, crystal, stalactites, and wood are all examples of these marks. Each mark memorizes time in its own way. When we are able to decode the native form of a particular medium, then it is possible to read its history directly. For example, the trunk of a very old pine very clearly and visibly documents the rising and falling of the sun.
Because the marking of time refers directly to historical events, I decided to build an interface in which touching the time marks allows access to information. I decided further to work with the time marks of trees. The annual rings would give me quite short and annually defined spaces of time.
Wood is a delicate material, because it is a living material, which is in permanent movement. Therefore I tried to find a way to put a metal conductor in place of the annual rings. For this experiment I took advantage of the way the annual rings in wood are divided into two parts. One part is a quick-growing summer one, which is softer then the slow-growing winter one. It was possible to sandblast the surface to make the gaps for the metal conductor. For this experiment I chose acacia wood, which is hard and which has summer and winter rings of nearly the same width. Thus, the wood does not expand or contract much when drying.
The surface of the tree is equipped with 64 wired annual rings. Each wire is scanned by one capacitive sensor, so that there are 64 working sensors. Because the capacitive sensors detect approximation by high frequency bursts, they all have to run in a daisy chain to avoid interaction while operating. A microcontroller analyzes the data provided by parallel multiplexing and sends them via a Serial-to-USB to the laptop. A program receives the incoming data, handles the playback of the sound files, and sends the sound to the speakers, which are assembled in the back. Because the program switches to the next file when one is already played and turns back to the first one when all are played already, many different files can be added to one annual ring.
Concept and realisation: | Dominik Schumacher |
Exhibitions: | «the free will - 20 years Glasnost» |
Type: | Semesterproject |
Institution: | |
Production date: | WS 04 / 05 |
Professors: | |
