Years of music by Ryan

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Now if you cut up the tree and put a record sized slab of wood on a special record player, will it play music?

Apparently, yes. Artist Bartholomaus Traubeck has modified a record player to play the growth rings of a tree. Here's his explanation:

"A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently."

It's a mesmerizing piece of music.

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.