Step Three: Imagine if trees gave off wifi signals?

I'm calling this piece "The Tree of Life." Looked at from certain angles, it evokes individual dancers entwined in one mass. The elements are moving toward one another and writhing to escape. 

Maya Angelou once said that nothing that man makes can be alien to man. She was talking about our fear of things considered unnatural, all the Others we push away and to the edge of society or accept only with grudging skepticism. Technology is one of our reigning Boogeymen, even as we become more and more dependent. I ricochet between wanting to keep the beeping and the screen time spent hunched over one metallic device or another to the fewest possible hours, and feeling as if cell phones, tablets, computers—the entire electronic maelstrom—may be the way that so many of us will realize ideas and dreams to an extent we can't even imagine right now, and never would have otherwise. Wearable computers and nanobots and athletic tracking devices are already piggybacking outside and inside our bodies; myoelectric prostheses go further, becoming one with the body, feeding off energy from the user's muscles. The scale will tip even more. 

When I first discovered the borer beetles were chewing away at the grape vine wood for this piece (see earlier post), it seemed as though for every hole they excavated in the wood, I attached a corresponding computer seed pod. As fast as the beetles ate, that's how fast I needed to make and attach seed pods (see below for how these are made). Eventually I might have hundreds of computer seed pods mimicking the shape of a wooden tree, one that was no longer there. 

Many people who see the sculptures in this series, even up close, don't realize immediately that I'm working with computer parts. "The work is so organic, so natural," they say. How else could it be? I made it. It's an idea that's both exciting and a little unnerving. I mean, what would a computer tree do?

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How Was It Made?
Each of these seed pods takes about an hour to make. The thousands of ceramic capacitors and radial varistors I use need to have the long, insecty metal "legs" clipped off. Different sized putty balls are formed. And then I press the computer parts into the balls. After the finished seed pods dry, I fasten them to the wood with glue and nails. I did a quick count and I've used about 200 seed pods for just this piece. Which means 200 hours, not counting the time to attach the pods or to first track down the wood. Oh, and freezer time: 3 days. It's amazing how something takes on a life of its own.

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