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ARQUEOLOGY OF SKY SAMAN
WATERSHED ART AND ECOLOGY , 2025
CHICAGO
REALTIME SOUND AND KINETIC SCULPTURE
Archeology of the Sky Saman transforms the climatic memory held in the wood of a forty-year-old samán tree—found on Colombia’s Atlantic coast—into a living sonic composition. The tree’s growth patterns, shaped by decades of coastal weather, salt-laden winds, and shifting seasons, form a portrait of this landscape and its dialogue with the sky.
Using sensors, an Arduino-controlled motor, and a linear actuator, the work scans the wood’s cross-section, allowing the rhythms of growth and their variance to guide a real-time composition. It is not each ring that produces a note, but the tempo and texture of the piece that are shaped by the tree’s lived experience—decades of exchanges between atmosphere and earth, ocean and inland.
The samán cross-section floats on the wall, slowly moving in a way that resembles the passage of time—like a pendulum of memory—offering shifting perspectives on its surface and allowing different parts of its climatic portrait to be read. The work arises from the question of how to create protocols for listening to the sky, positioning tree rings as a bridge between landscape and cosmos, and as living archives where planetary rhythms are inscribed.