Sun Eaters
Sun Eaters, a physical computing installation, translates the bioelectric rhythms of trees into real-time visual changes through custom electronics I developed to measure, process, and visualize plant bioelectric signals. Exploring the conception of art as a tool for sensing, I am exploring how we relate to the non-human plant world(s) around us.
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Sun Eaters visualizes plant bioelectricity as light. For example, in a recent installation of the artwork at the Toronto Botanical Garden, a grove of trees are equipped with branches that enable people to both see (through light from LEDs) and feel (via vibration from motors) trees’ unique “heartbeat”. At several touch stations visitors can hold the prosthetic branches that make up the installation, which contain sensors that pick up the bioelectric rhythms of each tree. The branches reveal the electrical patterns unique to each tree, a constantly shifting combination of internal factors and external environmental cues.[2][3] In this way people are able to hold hands with the tree and perceive it in a way they that would otherwise be impossible.
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This work was developed out of a desire to create works that facilitate points of connection and increased care between humans and the more-than-human natural world. I am investigating whether artworks can act as an interface for understanding ecological processes. I hope that the installation will prompt a deeper knowledge of trees and a means of seeing them as unique individuals, similar to how people see each other.
Mission
The opportunity to exhibit Sun Eaters, sharing it with various publics, is owed to several institutions and many individuals. Thank you to the following:
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The Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, California for their initial support of its first installation in fall 2020.
The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology on the campus of the University of California San Diego who exhibited it in May 2021 as part of their Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) performance series.
Cite Internationale des Arts, where it was shared through an artist in residence in August 2021, as part of an artistic co-creation lab, Through the Eyes of the Others led by artists Tjasa Crnigoj, alongside Garance La Fata, Cristina Rosenberg, and Gethce Pierre.
The Currents New Media Festival organizers and volunteers who supported its installation at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe in 2022.
Thanks also to curators Nina Czegledy and Joel Ong for making it possible to bring Sun Eaters indoors through exhibition and symposium Sensoria: The Art & Science of our Senses at Gales Gallery in Toronto.
DesignTO for curating the work into their January 2023 festival and installation assistance by United Contemporary gallery’s staff.
To Raghad Shawky El-Shebiny, Brian MacLean, and Joel Ong for bringing Sun Eaters into their creative visions and the 2023 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at York University.
Also most recently to Gabrielle Johnson with the City of Toronto and the staff and volunteers at the Toronto Botanical Garden throughout the readaptation of Sun Eaters to their beautiful cherry grove at TBG for the 2023 Nuit Blanche Festival’s Independent Projects.
