The Tree
Over the past few weeks I've done a number of experiments to determine how the tree "sees." I created a digital pinhole camera and took a series of photographs then experimented placing inverted photograms onto the pinhole images. The effect is that of a "burn," much like a memory burned onto the tree's rings. Each burn represents a moment in time, caught in a silouette snapshot. Throughout this process I've continually thought about the affordances of the tree. I kept asking, "What does the tree control?" And I kept coming back to one thing, "The tree controls its memories."
The core idea is that the "tree" (in the form of you, or I) can control these various burned memories, placing them into its field of view - much like a stage - and the various memories will interact, irregardless of scale (which changes depending on the size of the tree when the memory happened). Animations affect change of the subsequent memories.
For example, if a mouse comes across a dandelion it bumps into it and the seeds blow away. The next time the dandelion is placed on the stage there are twice as many. If the mouse did not bump into it there would only be one the next time around.
The memories will explore the collision of cultures - plant, animal, human - and our effect and dependence on one another. There will also be magical moments, taken from stories and mythologies, that work their way into the life of the memory.