A week's research residency at Nikarleby, in collaboration with Per Hüttner.
Outdoor performances for a tree and humans.
Vision Forum production in dialogue with Earthwise in Denmark and Morgondagens konstpublik in Sweden. Scientific support INRAe-PIAF in France. Project supported by Kulturbryggan, Svenska kulturfonden and Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse.
We know that plants rest at night, in the same way as animals. But do they also dream? What is their nocturnal existence like? What similarities and differences can we find between them and ourselves? In the performances, the audience is invited to spend a long time with a singular tree and experience signals based on the tree's internal processes. It is a moment dedicated to the inner life of a specific tree, entangled with the specific rhythm of life of a human being.
PepiPIAF is a tool that measures the tree's internal signals. This non-invasive technology is attached to a branch. It measures changes in pressure and temperature inside the tree itself in real time, based on the movement of sap. It shows how a tree adapts to changes in temperature, season and daily rhythm. We are also measuring the natural signals of the human nervous system in
electroencephalogram (EEG). One of the members of the audience wears an EEG cap that measures his brain activity on his scalp. The Pépipiaf and EEG measurements are modulated by sounds recorded live from the internal life of the tree (sap, soil at root level).
These sound sequences are played for the trees' root systems (where they are most sensitive to sound), and for humans, interspersed with periods of silence where the audience can listen to the surrounding life and concentrate on the tree.
Do
 trees dream of CO2? creates a platform for possible exchanges between human beings and a tree, with its unique life history and evolutionary past.
But more than anything else, the project offers the public the opportunity to take the time to be in the world with other living beings, and to imagine new possible interrelationships with other forms of life on earth.