TREE TIME
2020, 4K, 8 min
Music by Soren Roi
Tree Time imagines a relationship between nature and technology unmediated by human presence. The video was shot in the Amazon rainforest with a drone enacting a disembodied point of view that floats through the densely compressed forest canopy, taking off, hovering above the ground, and occasionally returning to it. This artificial surveillance-observer envisages a different form of time: one which cannot be measured and is devoid of the narrative punctuation of seasons wherein all of the earth’s natural processes appear to unfold simultaneously.
The work’s title is informed by a series of interviews with a dendrochronologist who studies methods of tracking climate change by ‘reading’ the annual tree rings in the Amazon rainforest –ecological recordings reveal a hidden dimension of narrative time within nature itself. Initially, developed for dating archeological artifacts, today this method is deployed to study the changes human eco-interference has introduced into the atmosphere. These natural markings inscribe data-rings on human behavior into the tree just as humanity uploads the information it deems important for posterity into the cloud.
