thomas traxler's idea of a tree

roving reporter david (a.ka. "my bro'") is based in vancouver, and his latest check-in included a reference to a smart thinking creative designer - thomas traxler. thomas came up with "the idea of a tree" project. never heard of it? well join the bunch, neither had i. however, there's some very worthy thinking going on here so i decided to dig deep and check out what's going on.

it's a clever concept - an installation that creates a piece of art. useable functional art.

powered by nothing but sunlight and some threads, the "idea of a tree project" shows how objects, that's right objects, can grow during the course of a day. yeah grow during the course of a day. i love this - take sunlight, equipment, material and allow something to happen. the pace of the product's emergence is determined by the amount of sunlight. makes sense right? don't circumvent the natural course of things by resorting to nuclear or whatever else is sparking up the grid that day.

thomas' installation is powered by a couple of solar cells. the amount of sunlight varies of course and what's truly clever and cool is that the speed of the process (which is driven by the amount of sunlight) determines the amount of saturation of the thread, giving a visual recording in the resulting object.

here's a youtube interview with thomas . . .

traxler's gotta pay the bills so here are a couple of links that might tickle your fancy, not to mention the depths of your wallet:

you can buy some traxler ceramic badges, or nip over here for a look at his book and other odds and ends.