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Confluence Public Art Programme

Confluence 2013 - The Singing Trees of Tremough by Stanza May 2013Stanza transforms environmental data into art at Cornwall’s university campus

The University of Exeter and Falmouth University will host two projects by international new media artist, Stanza at the Tremough Campus in Penryn between 11 and 23 May 2013 as part of the new Confluence public art programme.

Stanza is an internationally-recognised artist who has been exhibiting worldwide since 1984.  He was one of the first artists to experiment with internet-based work and his work researches cities and data generated by the urban landscape.

Taking the form of two installations – Univercity: A World of New Possibilities and The Singing Trees of Tremough – these projects collect and translate environmental data into site-specific artworks.

Both installations use a series of ad-hoc networks of sensors that pick up measurements of light, temperature, noise, pollutions and GPS location, which are channelled in real time through custom-built software to create visual and sonic representations of the surrounding space.

In Univercity: A World of New Possibilities, data is collected from inside the universities’ new learning, teaching and research hub, The Exchange and transformed into a site-specific visualisation.  The projected image will transform with changing environmental factors, creating a new environment where elements such as sound and temperature become shapes, colours and visual distortions.

Univercity: A World of New Possibilities will be shown on the ground floor of The Exchange from 11 to 17 May 2013.

The Singing Trees of Tremough collects data from the Campus grounds, connecting a wireless network of sensors hidden in the branches of a tree to a custom-built speaker system.  This produces ambient sound that surrounds the artwork, representing the constantly changing information received from the sensors.  The result can be imagined as a tree that sings about its environment.

The Singing Trees of Tremough will be exhibited opposite The Sports Centre and the entrance to The Upper Bar in The Stannary between 17 and 23 May 2013.

Stanza will give an accompanying free talk in The Exchange Lecture Theatre at the Tremough Campus at 5pm on Monday 13 May 2013.  The Upper Bar in The Stannary will be open after the talk for drinks and discussion.