Comb the Tree
Art installation, 2019, showed at NYU ITP winter show
The idea is to create an interactive interface on which emotional connections and gentle conversations can happen, between two living creatures. Through the event of combing the tree which triggers projection and sound interaction, the audience could reveal the latent living process, which is subtle, invisible but ceaseless. Combing is a very humanistic, intimate and non-aggressive way of physical interaction. And combing a horizontal tree is more about playing old instrument, revealing and recreating from the existing texture of the tree. The texture on the tree is broken but rhythmic, static and full of time, hard but still warm to touch. The projection and sound interactive with combing add rich sensory experience to this physical activity. In this way, people could get more engaged in this material. And different modes of projection and sound when combing make different sensations accessible and revisitable, also bring delicacy, elegance and a sense of strangeness to certain extent.
Collaborator: Siyuan Zan ; My role: Coding for communication & sound part, conceptual design, prototyping, video production.
Tool: Arduino, processing, p5.js, projection mapping
For the first mode of projection and sound, I hope to use the projection as a reminiscent of the latent living process inside the tree, like the ceaseless flowing liquid in the vascular bundle, rough knots and fissures on the tree trunk, and wrinkles on skin…And the melody would create a feeling of nostalgia, distance, lifelong memory and like fire burning leaves.
The melody finally came from an Iceland folk song: Vísur Vatnsenda-Rósu. During the process I also listened to impressionism classic music and in scale Japanese music. For the melody part, the scale index was first set to control the basic style of music then using another index to pick notes from the scale index to control where the melody goes. In this way the melody can tolerate randomness during playing because of the scale is already set, at the same time simplify calculation in rate and make the base of melody adjustable. The melody was mapped with location on the tree. When the distance read where people are combing and send signal to computer triggering a note mapped with that location. The note was created by adjusting frequency of a sound sample, then using amp() and reverb() function to control fade-in and fade-out effect. Also we tried read the speed when combing to control the reverb effect of the sound. When people combing several times, they can add texture to the existing melody such as the boiling water and heavy soft breath.
For the second mode, I tried to use the graphic translated from sand-like waving pattern to add a liquid layer to the existed tree texture. The sound sample was recorded when gently agitating a large pool of water. When people combing, the force sensor mounted on the comb tell the strength of the combing, and trigger the sound of agitating water when people play with the ‘liquid‘ on the surface.