- Welcome to “Do Trees Dream of CO2” at Teatermaskinen, on September 8 at 18.30
(booking necessary, contact berit@teatermaskinen.com, to reserve your ticket).

We all know that plants turn slowly towards the light so they can better absorb the sun’s energy. But how do they do that? They have neither a nervous system nor a brain.

Now you have the opportunity to meet the Swedish artist Per Huttner and his French colleague Karine Bonneval who visit Teatermaskinen in September to make an interdisciplinary performance. In the performance they create a platform for communication between trees and humans. The event is a journey over water, into the forest where the audience gets a unique opportunity to take part of the inner lives of trees.

The artists have reformatted scientific technology so that it can be used to create new and interesting artistic expressions. In other words, they have turned the technology that scientists use to study the internal communication of trees into artistic tools. The artists use sound to transform the trees’ internal signals into something that we humans listen to and that is aesthetically interesting. Parallel to that, they also take signals from the audience’s brains in create sounds that are played to the roots of the trees, where they are the most sensitive to sound. The performance thus forms a platform for humans and trees to interact in new and exciting ways.

Humans have traditionally ignored plants’ ability to solve problems. Biology has recently acquired important knowledge about plants and their perception and problem solving skills. We gradually learn more about how do plants react when the surroundings world changes and what they do in order to enhance their chances of survival. Mankind has also been relatively blind to many of the similarities that we share with the vegetal life around us. But since we share the same planet and the same evolutionary past, we also share a lot of biochemistry. In biology much attention has recently been given to the agency of plants – how they sense the world and deal with changes in their environment.

The project is supported by Kulturbryggan.