Thickets & Clearings
2025
Tree branches, leaf litter, mountain soil, clay, programmed sensors and servo motors, microcontrollers, field recordings and speakers
Over the course of the artist’s residency, they explored Taiwan’s green spaces and key geological sites, including Yangmingshan National Park. At these sites, the artist utilised a mix of audio recorders, piezo microphones, anemometers and light dependent resistors to collect data on sonic vibrations and environmental conditions.
A culmination of this research, Thickets & Clearings brings together natural and technological materials to create an immersive site-specific installation that responds to its surroundings. Branches and leaf litter collected around the Treasure Hill Artist Village and mountain soil from Yangmingshan are animated through a system of programmed motors triggered by light, sound and motion sensors embedded in and around the artwork. Taking in environmental stimulus, trees twitch, leaves flutter and soil resonates. Underpinning the installation is a soundscape of over a hundred field recordings taken from numerous natural sites around Taiwan.
By reinterpreting and reconstituting the natural world through technological means, the artist proposes a framework within which nature and technology are not discreet entities, but rather deeply entwined. Acknowledging this entanglement in the thicket of life, we can find clarity and open positive pathways for both fields to adapt to and be in service of one another.
Shown as part of 2025 Season 2 Resident Artist Exhibition, Treasure Hill Artist Village, Taiwan from 26 Jul to 10 Aug 2025.