Years, (2011)

Bartholomäus Traubek

“The grooves in a vinyl record contain audio information that can be transmitted through a turntable’s needle into audible sound. But what if instead of an LP, you could play the rings of a tree trunk?

That is what German-born artist Bartholomäus Traubek appears to have accomplished with “Years”, a new artwork that takes a converted record player and uses it to “play” cross-sections of a tree, generating sound by scanning the spinning rings on the surface of the wood with a PlayStation Eye Camera. This data is transmitted through the control arm (which has a stepper motor attached) to a computer, which generates a music track based on the surface readings using the program Ableton Live.

So what does a tree sound like? According to Traubeck’s work, a haunting, spare piano - albeit one prone to jarring notes when the turntable’s “needle” passes over a particularly knotty part of the ring pattern.”

- (via: CBC)

Family Tree by Black Lips

(Source: youtube.com)