Tree Light Cycle, 2014

‘Tree Light Cycle’ is aimed at directly at building on previous work. It takes the lights of the Salamanca Trees, as seen in ‘Life as a City Tree’ and reduces the scene to a lightbox that brings the ambience into the studio. Everything from the sound design, to the construction of the box, to the dappled leaves displayed on the wall facing the artwork adds to the expression of place projected by this work. In taking notes of comments by Rowe (2010) the use of space to display this work has been a big consideration and the size of this space affects the viewer’s immersion. The use of dark walls and a small room is intended to add to the feeling that you are there in the natural space of the work without distracting from the work. The placement in a small dark place is intended to appeal directly to multiple senses through light and sound. The light positioning is taken directly from images of the Salamanca Trees and their urban environment. Rather than using the hard white-light of the LEDs it has been intended that the front panel diffuse the light, softening the experience to imitate the leaves in the wind as they move over the tree-lights. While this work is not a category of sound art on its own the work looks at the principles of sound design and tries to recognise the opportunities that surround sound offers within a gallery experience as outlined by Samartzis (2009). Keeping the sound within a contained space, a single room, has been identified as a design requirement for this work, which has a significant aural component.