Susan Hey artist page

Messages from Trees                                                                            Image Gallery

While immersing myself in the environment of trees and stopping to listen, I felt that they could be communicating with me. While researching I discovered that trees communicate with each other via their root systems using Mycelium, and their canopies by releasing toxins if required to fend off danger. My premise for this work was to record their messages from their communication in drawings. By attaching drawing implements to the trees, they recorded their messages. The images were affected by the environmental conditions in which they were recorded which for this series of drawings was wet and windy for a sustained period of time.

For the video work, I explored the notion of interpreting the communications of the trees by drawing their messages using me as a drawing machine. I attached spray cans to my arms and moved around as I supposed branches would, spraying paint onto the ground as each interpretation came to me. Thus, showing me what the trees messages were. The messages drawn on the ground will eventually seep down through the soil to the roots and Mycelium network where they will be re-interpreted by the trees, thus completing or participating in the communication loop that is an important part of life in this century. Over time the messages will fade and eventually disappear, but first the traces of the communication will be there. New communications can be drawn over the previous communications adding further layers of interpretation and the possibility of new languages being developed. Trees also communicate through their canopies by the movement of their branches and leaves which adds another layer of interpretation to the loop.

Messages from Trees (2017) Video 25 minutes continuous loop

Trees, Communication and Connection

You and I are much the same.

We grow in the world

without much notice.

We sway in the breeze.

Bend in the wind

and yet we survive.

We communicate without words

yet we understand each other well.

We each have different uses in the world.

Those uses can been good or bad.

Mostly we survive

but not without traces.

Susan Hey (2017)