If a tree falls

A camera made from a hollowed out tree stump, returned to the woodland it had been recovered from to share an insight into an alternate arboreal temporal experience.

“We are where we are and we see only what can be seen. But, with intuition, we can know far more than [that].” [1] (J. Lovelock, 2019) Through the fragile development of ecosystems, the natural world became one self-regulating entity with one purpose; to regulate temperature so as to facilitate the existence of as many natural beings as possible. In the last few thousand years humanity has evolved to the point of self awareness, bringing both positives and negatives of this heightened intelligence to the natural world - we have grown more aware of ourselves yet less of our instincts, as well as being part of a larger whole. Do we consider it (the natural world) to be as aware as us though? What if even in nature, deep in the forest, where human eyes don’t pry, we were being observed by the world around us. Would we act differently? Perhaps we would tidy up that picnic if we thought the tree could hold us accountable for not doing so. By repurposing a fallen stump of Ash, turning it into a pinhole camera, then placing it back into the woodland that it was lifted from; ‘If a tree falls’ seeks to share the perspective of the flora on a plane that we as humans can experience too, despite our evolutionary differences. Inherently there is an anthropocentric motivation to this by ‘humanising’ the tree’s experience, however in a world that is so human-centric, to look beyond our human condition it is necessary to consider the trees place in our world from a perspective we can understand - that of life, light and vision.

Whilst making an exposure through the camera, different temporal experiences are highlighted. Waiting for 45 minutes in my linear timeline I could tell you exactly what happened, how many cigarettes I smoked, how many pages I read; it is all quantifiable. When looking at the ‘temporal loops’ provided by the camera this 45 minutes of my life is broken down into a ‘blink’. “Isaac Newton thought in such terms about time: for him, there was the time of humans, felt by us all and measured by our clocks, and there was the time of God, which is instantaneous, which doesn’t flow. From the human point of view of Newton’s God, the infinite line of human time, stretching backward and forward into infinity, is but an instant. He sees it all in one blink.” [2] C. Galfard, (2015) Though this project is making no claim to share this ‘view of Newton’s God’ it does express these alternate temporal experiences aesthetically. 

“Reality is multi-dimensional and non-linear” [3] J. Lovelock, 2019 As the world has shrunk through modernisation, and technology has progressed to the point at which one is always reachable, time has become more of a commodity. Since Newton's time, when watches were a rarity, and time was a privilege to know, it is now a privilege to have any to spare. It is with this awareness that the concept of linear time likely spread, as can be evidenced through aboriginal people’s concept of time as a loop (if a word even exists for it in their language). Time existed before we had knowledge of it, it is only as we felt the need to explain everything that it was given a name. The limitations of our own existence doesn’t allow us to see beyond our own ‘timelines’ to the overall picture. The universe is bigger than us, and perhaps bigger than we will ever understand. A linear way of thinking is the most logical way of breaking down the overwhelming concept of a ‘multi-dimensional’ reality, though it is potentially also the largest factor holding us back from a deeper understanding of the whole: “we have been too reliant on language and logical thinking and have not paid enough attention to the intuitive thinking that plays such a large part in our understanding of the world” [4] J. Lovelock, (2019). In the 21st century, as humans become more reliant on the systems we have created for survival, with the advent of AI and a need to ‘re-wild’ much of nature, we can only hope that some of this intuitive, ‘instinctive’ thinking is not lost to code…

[1] J. Lovelock - Anthropocene - 2019

[2] C. Galfard - The Universe in Your Hand: A Journey Through Space, Time and Beyond - 2015

[3] J. Lovelock - Anthropocene - 2019

[4] J. Lovelock - Anthropocene - 2019