My friend Scot started to discuss a potential project with me about ten years ago: To install the sensors on trees to gather the growth information and covert these data into sound and images, so that the tree can sing and paint.

We discussed it for ten years, but there always something hindered our progress. After all, the electronic circuits are difficult to survive in the outdoor environment. However, in the beginning of 2013, I met Prof. Jiang from the Bioelectromagnetics Laboratory of National Taiwan University. His lab has complete solutions for the environmental and agricultural sensors. Our blue-sky project was realized in couple of months. We planted a tree in my friend’s house, and three sensor poles surrounded it. The sensors took pictures every fifteen minutes and record the wind, rain, humidity and sunlight data. This new born tree was like a baby in the Intensive Care Unit. These data gave me more imaginations of converting cold numbers into warm images and sounds. In 1983, artist Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano lived together with a rope tied to each other. In this project, the net is like an invisible rope that tied me and the tree together, and I had to live with this tree together and contemplate the meaning of it.

Prof. Jiang and his assistant Lin

Sensor to collect temperature and humidity data under the leaf

My friend's house

the sweatshop

Installing the wind and rain sensor module

the camera module