Sotavento – what does a tree sound like?

If trees made music..

Sotavento is an artistic sound abstraction of the passionate and endless relationship between millions of trees and one single, inexorable wind, a wind that we all share. We establish an Internet-based, real-time movement communication between moving trees located in different countries. The trees’ “dance” is tracked down by two dual-axis accelerometers, each fixed to the tip of a branch. We use the complex branch movements to generate or to trigger sounds. In this installation a tree is a self-replicant sound maker of its own dance. The audience can perceive the relation between the “dance” of the tree and the music it produces. Even is there is no wind, the tree in Mexico can “ask” (via Internet) for movements to a tree in Italy and generate its sounds with this information. The sounds are to be listened thanks to a set of four speakers installed around the tree.

Sotavento – Link.