The Living Tree is an interactive sound installation where surface transducers are deployed in a real-life setting to design an immersive and affectively engaging interaction exploring the life of trees. The surface transducer technology emits vibrations through whatever material you press it against, turning the material into a speaker. When you touch and place your ear onto the trunk of the tree, you hear sounds of water running through the wooden veins combined with a heavy pulse and breathing that make the tree come alive sonically. Using Kinect sensors, we give people the ability to interact with the tree by moving around and climbing on it, causing the tree to react differently, expressing itself with different sounds. Through the sonic interaction, people might form new affective attachments to trees as living creatures with personality, character and expression.
The project was awarded the BEST DEMO AWARD at the DIS 2018 conference. Click to download a paper about the work.
Credits
Master thesis project by: Malthe Emil Blichfeldt, Jonathan Komang-Sønderbek, Frederik Højlund Westergård.
Supervised by: Jonas Fritsch