If trees could cry

If Trees Could Cry is an audiovisual exploration of trees’ experiences, their ‘senses,’ and the way they perceive the world. I record the EEG signals of trees with a DIY EEG device as they sustain damage and convert that biofeedback into sound, turning signals into data, into waves, making the inaudible audible.

It is an invitation to experience nature with more than just our eyes. Through touch, through sound, through senses we may not even know exist.

In the hills around Aracena, cork is still harvested by hand from the trees. It is an ancient ritual that consists as much of scent and sound as it does of sight. Every nine years, the same oak tree is stripped bare with almost graphic precision and left behind in a summer when temperatures rise above 40 °C. If Trees Could Cry reaches for something hidden beneath that beauty, for the question: can a tree cry? What does the cork oak feel when its bark is stripped away time and again? What goes on inside the tree under that relentless sun? What does it mean to be stripped of your bark, or in some cases, to be cut down? Who or what hears you?