#artsinfife

[jjsalchemy]

Fabulous recital in St Andrews yesterday - great to see @VeraWenkert ❤ and hear some of the gifted singers from her Institut Stimmkunst in Zurich including wonderful @charlottewhittlesings ❤ with the excellent Heisenberg Ensemble at the university's Laidlaw Music Centre. Great voices, great music and, as befitting opera singers, some fab frocks, too. Thank you! #recital #standrews #institutstimmkunst #heisenbergensemble #opera #singing #music #arts #artsinfife #internationalcollaboration https://www.instagram.com/p/ClgCr72ojQj/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[notquitedailyamy]

Tuneful Trees

I recently stumbled upon this incredible project masterminded by German media artist Bartholomäus Traubeck…

Forget vinyl, Traubeck has created a turntable that plays slices of tree. 

Instead of a pin passing over grooves, a microscopic camera scans the tree’s year-rings in a super smart and speedy fashion, gathering data that is then programmed to output as piano sounds. 

Much like a record’s grooves, the year-rings of a tree hold the key to a whole lot of information. Not so alike is the fact that this info pertains to age, growth rate, environment, proximity to forest fires etc. ( - the study of all this fascinating stuff is called “dendrochronology”).

The nature of every individual tree’s year-rings is entirely different. Though within species and common climates similarities may be identified, for example the year-rings of a fast-growing fir tree will be very spaced out, while narrowing rings will be consistent among a group of trees that have lived through an unusually cold spell in their normal climate, still in no two organisms will the patterns form identically. The musical outcomes are consequently endless, but Traubeck has created a piece entitled “Years” out of a select few. Experience the entrancing result below:

‘Years’ on Vimeo

Not everybody’s cup of tea I’m sure, but I’m in awe of Traubeck’s vision to shine a light on and explore these bona fide and epic databases that silently exist within nature. He’s giving form, voice and perceptibility to incredible living phenomena that for most of us would otherwise go unnoticed.

‘Years - scratching’ on Vimeo - In this demonstration of Traubeck’s ingenious record player, you can clearly see how a knot in the tree’s year-rings affects the output of sound.

Talking about the development of his work, and of mixing technology and science with nature, I found the following words from an interview with Stuart B. Russel B.E.M., to be particularly thought-provoking: 

“I think this dichotomy we tend to use is not the only model to think about the concepts of nature and technology. The lines blur the closer you look at them. How much of the human is natural anymore? Which parts of ‘nature’ are technology-influenced? We tend to think of people herding cattle in some alpine sheds as archaic and natural. But cows are actually a very recent introduction to the alpine landscape. I like how everything is evolving all the time and how you can easily break apart these concepts of what is natural, and what is labelled technology.”

“The process is kind of scientific but the outcome is not. I aim to make artworks after all. But to actually materialise a concept and try it in different approaches usually opens up new ideas which, for me, are not graspable in a purely theoretical stage.” 

Traubeck has credited the cover art of Jethro Tull’s album Songs from the Wood as inspiration for his experimental turntable installation:

[Image source: http://tralfaz-archives.com/]

In other tree news:

During my recent trip stateside, I tracked down the the world’s largest tree with some of my family. The big guy’s called General Sherman - a giant redwood located in the Giant Forest (naturally) of Sequoia National Park. It’s so funny watching everybody try to take photos of it or better still of themselves-and-it… it’s nigh on IMPOSSIBLE to fit it all into the shot!

Case in point…

This was the most of the tree any of us got in one photo:

And of course, another trip, another classic-Milners-on-the-move anecdote to tell…

Having paid heed to the unmissable signage warning everybody of bear activity en route to the General, and followed instructions to lock all food and drink in metal cans or in the car boot and under no circumstances to carry any comestibles on our person during the relatively short hike to the tree, we set off. About half way in, and some hikers on their return trip gleefully informed us that there was currently a black bear just off the pathway about 50m away. 

Mentioning no names….

“Um, okay”

“It’ll be fine, they must be used to people walking past” 

“Oh yeah, look! I see it! It’s okay, it’s just minding it’s own business nibbling at that termite mound there.”

“Phew. And it’s not like we’ve got any better edibles on us to tempt it away.”

“Oh crap guys!! I’ve just realised I forgot I’ve got a bag of jelly babies and an entire box of Special K bars in my backpack!!!”

….We are now parallel with the bear…..

“WHAT?!? Right. Keep going…”

“If that bear so much as turns the smallest millimetre away from its termites you are ditching that backpack and we are out of here…”

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod”

“I think it’s turning…”

“I think we’re going to die.”

“JUST GO”

…and, thankfully, we did live to see the tree and tell the tale. Do these things happen to other people as much as they happen to us?!

SuSo: “Coyote Caller” by Joshua James / https://open.spotify.com/track/0VfLSNN4WlqpAdWcgrhpgG - because it sounded SO great driving through the forested mountains of Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks. 

References: 

http://traubeck.com/years/

Interview - Bartholomaus Traubeck, Stuart Russell on behalf of Urban Times, pub. Feb 26, 2015 ( https://issuu.com/artsinfife/docs/bartholomaus_traubeck )