trees is a preliminary project conducted by the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST), Marcus Maeder, in collaboration with the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL), Roman Zweifel.
During their forest climate research, Roman Zweifel and Fabienne Zeugin recently took high resolution measurements of ultrasound emissions from trees. When the water column in certain capillaries collapses, audible and ultrasound waves are produced. This phenomenon has been known for decades but the impact in terms of plant physiology is only partly understood. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, all the sound nuances are of great interest as they shed light on the phytophysiological interpretation. Thus, the scientific and artistic challenge is to optimize digital recording and reproduction technology so as to allow separation of the biologically induced acoustic signals in the ultrasound range as clearly as possible from the background noise. The better the results, the richer the artistic representation of the phenomenon and the more extensive our knowledge in the field of plant physiology.
However, the trees research project goes beyond “simple” ultrasound measurements and deals with the acoustic representation of multi-dimensional data relating to the climate and tree physiology: How can normally imperceptible processes that just exist as measured data be represented sonically/muscially and thus being interpreted artistically? Tree sounds and the sonic representation of the measurements resulting from the study of the local climate of trees are being used to create a virtual acoustic environment in which an ecophysiological system is made experienceable in a model situation. Over and above that, the researchers at ICST and WSL are interested in models that represent the climatic condition of not just individual but several trees, a section of woodland or various locations in the Alpine region. This is achieved, for example, through sounds which vary from tree to tree depending on the tree’s location and provides interesting perspectives and knowledge on acoustic events and their biological/climatic contexts in three-dimensional space or within a landscape through a spatial representation model in the form of a 3D sonic space representing a region or a landscape.