WoodEar

Commissioned specifically for Pace Digital Gallery "WoodEar,” the installation, expands into the gallery the software that launched on Turbulence in September 2012.

The work attempts to merge the dynamic qualities of the biological network of a tree -- roots gathering water and nutrients; leaves using sunlight to produce food; and phloem and xylem moving water and nutrients across the structure -- with the digital network of the Internet. A series of sensors attached to the tree stream data on the state of its environment – light, temperature, air pressure, and wind. This live data, merged with images and recordings of the tree’s immediate surroundings, is made audible and visible in the gallery.

Click on the image above to download a pdf diagram of WoodEar.
Download the app from the WoodEar website.
Visit the original Internet artwork online.

The Artists

Peter Traub (b. 1974, Johannesburg, South Africa) is a composer and installation/net artist. He completed his Ph.D. in the Composition and Computer Technologies program at the University of Virginia in 2010 and his Master’s in Electro-Acoustic Music from Dartmouth College in 1999. He has composed numerous works of electronic music as well as online and physical sound installations. His works have been performed and exhibited most recently at SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver, and the Spark Festival 2011 in Providence, RI. His first Turbulence commission, "ItSpace", was featured on NPR in 2008. He is currently based in Charlottesville, Virginia.

For WoodEar, Peter Traub collaborated with Jennifer Lauren Smith (b. 1979, Portland, Maine), a visual artist. Smith completed her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA in 2011. She has received several awards including the Vikki Katen Memorial Scholarship, Toby Devon Lewis Award, and most recently, a Wynn Newhouse Award for artists with disabilities. She has been an artist-in-residence at Seven Below Arts Initiative in Westford, VT, Art Farm, in Marquette, NE, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center in Nebraska City, NE and has shown her work both in the USA and abroad. She currently lives in Florida.

Peter Traub's website
Jennifer Lauren Smith's website

Peter Traub's previous works, Left to Right:
Curve (2010) - installation at the University of Virginia
Sound Study at the Center of the End of Things (2009) - installation in a building slated for demolition
Study No, 1 for Bodies, Metal and Air (2010) - "sound shaping" sculptures created for dance

Turbulence.org is a project of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA). Founded in 1996 and now celebrating 17 years of service to artists, Turbulence.org has commissioned over 200 works that creatively explore the Internet as a site of production and transmission. Turbulence.org has exhibited and promoted additional net art through Artists Studios, Guest Curators, Spotlights, Networked_Performance, Networked_Music_Review, Floating Points, Programmable Media, and Upgrade! Boston.

Turbulence's website

Turbulence@PaceDigitalGallery is generously supported by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts

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