“Citizen Tree” presented by Andrews
Symposium:
Session Title:
- More Than Human (artist talks)
Presentation Title:
- Citizen Tree
Presentation Subtheme:
- Ecologies of place
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
In a time of ever-increasing climate crisis, the recognition of the importance of forests and tree-cover remains critical. Citizen Tree is a work-in-progress project that playfully engages the public with the importance of forests through a provocative, per-formative, technological-ecological artistic intervention. CT is a mobile eucalyptus tree designed to travel through the Melbourne CBD, acting as if it is an-other independent inhabitant of the city. The project relates to recent tree planting initiatives of the City of Melbourne, as well as the tree emailing social experiment of Melbourne’s urban forest. Previous works by the artist that engage with the agency of natural systems with human perception are discussed as background to the project. Citizen Tree engages with the following ISEA themes, including creative robotics and human-machine partnerships, posthuman, transhuman, and ’more than human’ paradigms, the politics of machine learning algorithms and other new optical regimes.
