ListenTree
ABOUT
What will a tree hear, over the course of its life? What does it have to say?ListenTree situates sound in the trees of public spaces, to be discovered by those who hug them close. Press your ear to the tree to listen in. To create this effect, a loudspeaker is attached to the roots of the tree underground. The vibration conducts through its trunk and branches, and to a listener’s ears through their bones. At CIFF, four trees in the Camden Village Green connect us to the songs and prayers of the Wabanaki peoples (DAWNLAND), to the acoustic ecology of Gordon Hempton (Sanctuaries of Silence), and to a roving audio documentary of Bath, Maine (produced by the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab). Stop by and hug a tree for a story.
I work at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and the built environment, where I explore the relations between technology, developmental psychology, play, learning, and design. How do our physical surroundings shape our cognitive, social, intellectual, physical, perceptual, and emotional growth? I hold an M.A. and a Ph.D. from MIT’s Media Lab and previously studied lighting design at Calarts. Living between analog and digital, handcrafted and mass-produced, my work explores the ways in which objects and materials mediate and augment experience across contexts and cultures, systems, and scales.
CREDITS
Edwina Portocarrero