‘Years’ by Bartholomäus Traubeck (born Munich, Germany in 1987).
In our increasingly digital world it feels good sometimes to pull a piece of vinyl from a sleeve and put a very analogue record onto a turntable. It is also good sometimes to listen to something which goes beyond the generally accepted rules of composition.
This art piece combines aspects of these two pleasures with a striking and apparently mutually exclusive dichotomy – the growth rings of trees and the processing power of a computer. The computer converts the rings into an abstract piano composition, unique for each slice of tree – an unusual way of bringing us closer to the beauty and wonder of nature.
From the website:-
A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.
And here’s a link to a video of a tree rings being ‘played‘.
Prince Cavallo 