Context

The backbone of our idea is related to "tree of life." In our project, we intend to make an installation that both charges one's phone and rejuvenate the user by relating back to nature, which is where all lives originate. The use of wires and charging cables also relate to the idea that the tree of life connects all forms of creatures.

When we were first assigned wire, we thought about looking at some sculptures and found Alberto Giacometti’s work to be inspiring since it uses thin metal that almost resembles wire but yet forms certain non-abstract shapes. Then, we went to to more specifically investigate wire sculptures, and found Alexander Calder’s works to be rather inspiring aesthetically since we don’t want to make trees that look too dense. For the actual wire tree, we investigated Kue King. However, although we took the basic idea of a wire tree from him, we decided to simplify the tree so that it looks clean.

The implementation also draws on ideas from the two readings. First, Aesthetics of Interaction by Kwastek inspires us to incorporate some interactive components, so we decided to use charging cables since they are wires and refer to “life.” We wanted the audience to plug in their phones to the charging cables to interact. We also wanted to add something related to embodiment after reading Embodied Interaction by Dourish. We decided to incorporate sounds from nature like bird and tree sounds so that the audience can feel like being in nature and therefore rethink their embodiment in the world.

When picking our sources for the bird sounds, we decided to incorporate sounds of birds from all over the world so that the piece can be more incorporative.