Hybrid digital artwork. Originally commissioned for Vinterlys Festival 2023.
Imagine viewing the world from the perspective of a tree. And imagine making the world a greener place with the power of play!
Be a Tree – Green Earth by Tine Bech Studio is a hybrid digital installation that playfully blends sustainability, technology and play with the climate debate to encourage us to grow trees. A large LED screen becomes a digital tree encouraging players to re- forest a ver-sion of the Earth – the more we play, the more trees we plant!
A portal into a greener dimension the project invites people of all ages to pose in front of a tall, colourful LED screen and become a tree! The artwork interacts with people, and visitors see themselves in a range of colourful overlays inside a live growing tree. Once the tree is fully grown, the artwork then perfectly captures the player inside the tree and “plants them on earth” floating above them on the screen.
Art and technology can open new ways of ‘seeing’ the world, which might suggest new ways of acting within it – They are ‘materials of imagination’ that allows us to connect with worlds we can visualise but are yet to real-ise – a greener planet!
The planet Earth floating on the tall LED plinth, is created with open-source images from NASA satellite pictures and data stitched together from their observations of Earth’s land surfaces, oceans, and clouds into a seamless mosaic. Overlay-ing the NASA image is a green and blue illustration. NASA’s Blue Marble images uses true colour, combining red, green, and blue into a global composite and rendered in a 3D program. It’s what the eye can see.
The artwork is site specific and responds to place. The work fits both urban architectural places and nature spaces. In the photos, a tall screen is set among a circle of illuminated trees to create a magical place that ‘morphed’ people into trees at Vinterlys 2023.
Be a Tree – Green Earth premiered at Vinterlys 2023 in Denmark and we were proud to be part of the first light festival off the grid. The entire festival, were wind-powered, using energy stored on a truck-sized battery developed by Vestas Green energy.
Audiences Numbers. The artwork is designed to engage with significant number of people. Visitors at Vinterlys 2023, planted over 11 000 trees in 30 hrs (8 days between 6pm and 9.30pm)
With two trees growing, the project has the capacity to directly engage with up to 480 people per hour. The work can be scale up to create a larger installation with multiple trees growing by adding more LED panels. Audience interacts intuitively and actively participate, no matter what their level of knowledge of art or technology.
Be a Tree – Green Earth is visible by day and night. The artwork plays 24/7 with minimal invigilation or maintenance required.
Plant a tree through play and find ways to plant trees in your area!
Vinterlys Festival 2023, Ringkøbing-Skjern Kommune.
I have turned into a tree – Wow! (Audience at Vinterlys 2023)
Jeg er blevet til et træ – Wow
Be a Tree – Green Earth by Tine Bech Studio
Funded by Jyske Kunstfund, and supported by Ringkøbing-Skjern Kommune in Denmark.
Artist Lead, Tine Bech
Producer Dina Abu Hamdan
Software, Tarim / Media Playgrounds
Poster, Madeline Balaido
Copy writer, Kathryn Reilly