Houston | New York
Created by the Montreal art collective Daily tous les jours specifically for Discovery Green’s live oak allée, Hello, Trees! A Walking Serenade transforms your voice messages into light and music, inspired by the inaudible connections and processes that exist in nature.
Taking inspiration from the century-old live oaks that form the heart of the park, Daily tous les jours conceived Hello, Trees! as a metaphor for the way trees use nonverbal cues to communicate complex information. Comprised of a series of arches under the live oak canopy, visitors are invited to speak into input stations located at each end of the sculpture, and their voice messages are translated into light patterns that travel along the arches. The original voice input is gradually transformed into a musical melody as the light reaches the base of each arch. When two messages meet, a special light and sound effect is triggered; the result is an immersive experience that Daily tous les jours likens to a “crowd-sourced concerto,” changing gradually as visitors walk underneath the installation and mimicking the way trees create pathways of communication. New scientific discoveries of trees as social beings have found that, to increase their resilience, trees utilize communication in many forms to share needs and provide mutual assistance.
