Saving Myself

"saving myself" thematises the chronotopic universum: time as
humanity's final frontier, as a delimited unit of measurement of the
existential: an artifically controlled climate is created in a sealed
opaque glass cube containing a bonsai tree. By altering the climatic conditions according to the seasons, the bonsai can be made to produce a diverse series of annual rings. The size of the rings reflects the climate – the plant in any particular year therefore becomes "manipulable": a potential data store.

 

Every quarter year a picture of the tree is made automatically, evaluated, and this information is then used to produce an illumination and watering plan for the coming quarter. The tree saves a picture of itself, fragmented over time, in which it inscribes year by year, pixel by pixel. From outside the tree is only visible when illuminated, the only way of reading the saved image is by felling the tree.