World Tree : Raewyn Turner & Colin Beardon 2004
World Tree is about the contemporary notion of ‘information’. We hang on to written texts in the belief we can extract all their meaning. We keep masses of written and printed material we will never read, giving us a false sense of security. World Tree plays with this phenomenon, presenting glimpses of texts which are puzzling but which also disintegrate before our eyes. The fragments drift like poorly-remembered facts or stories. Knowledge is promised, but always eludes us.
World Tree is a standalone application written in REALBasic. World Tree never repeats itself; every time its played the words generated are unique.
The juxtaposition of the sole-authored text (forming the trunk and canopy of the tree) with text from the wider universe (forming the flowers and petals) is designed to highlight tensions between our subjective sensations and a universe accessed through digital communication (gathered from various websites eg. amateur astronomy, tissue culture and cell technologies). We understand the world systematically, that is, with our whole body, not just our eyes or ears or fingers or nose or tongue. The metaphor is the Tree which is a whole biological system through which the world is known.
‘World Tree ‘ was screened at Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Centre 23rd of November to the 2nd of December 2006 in Paris at Jeu de Paume, the French Cinémathèque, the Théâtre Paris-Villette, the Cinéma l'Entrepôt, the Cinéma du Monde, and in 3 cultural institutes, and Georges Pompidou Center http://www.art-action.org/en_info.htm
Raewyn Turner : Worldtree working drawing
World Tree: Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Centre 23rd of November to the 2nd of December 2006 in Paris at Jeu de Paume, the French Cinémathèque, the Théâtre Paris-Villette, the Cinéma l'Entrepôt, the Cinéma du Monde, and in 3 cultural institutes, and Georges Pompidou Center http://www.art-action.org/en_info.htm
World Tree :featured on the Italian site Neural.it http://www.neural.it/nnews/worldtree.htm.
Vodafone Digital Art Awards finalist, net art, Worldtree collaboration with Colin Beardon. World Tree
Graphite 2005 and ACM Siggraph Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/graphite/
11 International Festival of Electronic Art 404,Rosario, Argentina www.404festival.com
Time in Jazz”Digital Trance”, Sardinia, Italy, curated by Giannella De Muro http://www.timeinjazz.it/