Christopher Moeller

Christopher Moeller, C333 (Netherlands)
In cooperation with Pavlov Medialab (Netherlands) and prof. John Frazer (UK)
COMPUTERFOREST
2005

Comments for a ritual performance

IMAGINE being able to grow (not build) your own house.
IMAGINE planting the seed, tending and watering it and one day to wake and discover that it has finally matured.
IMAGINE not only growing a house...
IMAGINE growing a computing device...
IMAGINE a forest of computers...
IMAGINE a computer forest...

understanding the architecture of plants or trees and imagining what might be possible….the idea that trees are really information processors. From this point we realized that this could be a potential future for architecture, the architecture of forests, but also the architecture of computers. Computers seen not as ways of crunching huge quantities of data or storing enormous ready-made forests of material, but computers as a way of growing little seeds.

In the search for ever more powerful and efficient forms of computing new domains are being explored beyond current day technology, new architectures of computing. However It would seem that there are also other forms of computing which are slow and deep, yet infinitely rich in terms of the information that they can reveal. We have been exploring a number of projects which are attempting to unravel these potentials via a different path, namely through a series of experiments to test an 'evolutionary architecture' together with Prof. John Frazer and Pavlov Medialab. An earlier experiment explored the potential of human beings as computer processor agents.

Aside from functioning as atmospheric cleaning filters and oxygen production units, s are highly efficient measuring instruments both in terms of time and the spatial characteristics of the atmosphere embedded in daily and yearly cycles reflected in their yearly ring structure. For example the amount of carbon can be read from this structure. In this sense s offer similar possibilities as vessels of embedded information not unlike that found in ice-cores. In a way they can be seen as antenna informed by the electromagnetic spectrum ...

PLAYING OUT THE INFORMATION

Could it be interesting to plant the trees as an embedded super computer or network of computers, with the intention of recording and even playing the information that they have captured ….

In this way they could be celebrated in a special yearly event or ritual offering, an offering of knowledge, the knowledge of our planet as a gift to help reveal the hidden secrets of our universe...

...this could be ritualised into a 'playing of the information' ie a core could be cut and then played as if a record (vinal) on a record player to reveal and map its information rings and density of fiberous material, dna structure etc. to reveal the sounds of its carbon database.