Filesharing

Like Reefer Madness - only with "internets".....

Smoking Tree

And now one of the most beautiful pieces i've seen at Ars Electronica Center.



What happens when trees are no longer able to turn carbon dioxide into the oxygen we need to breathe?


During the day

In southern Ireland near John Gerrard’s home, an oak tree’s leaves suddenly cease producing oxygen and instead begin to give off carbon. The Smoke Tree is in fact a virtual sculpture. The polluting process unfolds over a whole day creating an ever-changing tableau, a sculpture in virtual smoke which presents a disquieting yet strangely plausible possibility.


At dusk

Over time the tree is weakening and producing less smoke. In approx. 200 years the tree will eventually stop producing smoke and fall rendering the work as a landscape from that time on.

As in previous works (see Watchful Portrait and The Ladder) the presentation frame operates as a navigation device, allowing the public to look around the tree as an 'image object' or virtual sculpture.

Video.

They Have Torn Down My Parent's House

it was made of wood and brick.
The windows they removed. To them it's real
estate, to me it's my heart being ripped in two.
The realtors, the bankers don't understand.
A house is made of family. My parent's house is a memory that will
endure after it's torn down.
They've been gone for not so many years, but I wanted this
house to live on.
I know the world is made of change, and change
is all that's real. But one thing I cannot change,
that is the way I feel. I mourn again,
because they have torn down my parent's
house, and it gives me pain. It was my house for many years.
My parents and sister died in it - I brought my children home to it.
I see us there all as if it were yesterday,
our laughter and tears in the rooms and up and down the hall.
The house once stood to remind me, but that too
is gone. They have torn down my parent's house,
it was made of wood and brick.
Yet a house is more than made of wood,
a house is made of love.