Years Record Player Turns Tree Trunk Slices into Music

This is one of those things that people probably never expected to ever see and which will leave nature lovers torn between admiration and grief.

Right to the point, Years is essentially a record player that takes a slice of a tree trunk and sings the song of the tree's life.

The tree's year rings are analyzed for strength, thickness and rate of growth in order to produce a song.

A turntable was modified to use a camera instead of a pin. The project also involves an acrylic lass, veneer, a multipurpose programmable toolkit called vvvv and, naturally, a computer.

“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,” says the artist.

“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."

There are no plans to turn this into a mass-made product, but the official page, complete with special thanks and the video itself, is found here.

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.