Be a Tree – Green Earth
Plant a tree through play.

Hybrid digital artwork. Originally commissioned for Vinterlys Festival 2023 and powered by Green Energy.

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 is a portal into a greener dimension. It is a sculptural digital artwork that blends sustainability and AR technologies – merging play with the climate debate and encouraging us to grow trees on earth.

The work 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.

The project playfully explores how technology can change our relationship with our planet. The screen becomes a digital tree encouraging players to re-forest a version of the Earth – the more we play, the more trees we plant!

In this way, art and technology open new ways of ‘seeing’ the world, which might suggest new ways of acting within it. Technology becomes a resource and a material of imagination that allows us to connect with worlds we can visualise but not yet realise. A greener planet.

The planet Earth floating high on the tall LED plinth, is made of two layers. An illustrative green and blue top layer communicate ‘this is EARTH’, and a NASA image created from a collection of satellite images and data stitched together from months of observations of Earth’s land surface, oceans, sea ice and clouds into a seamless, true-colour mosaic.

In the photos, a tall screen is set among a circle of illuminated trees to create a magical place that ‘morphed’ people into trees. 

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

Vinterlys 2023 was powered by Vestas Green energy.

Vinterlys Festival 2023, Ringkøbing-Skjern Kommune.