Trees of the Cherwell Valley

This installation uses a photographic archive of trees between Banbury and Oxford as raw material. Projected onto a screen of locally reclaimed timbers, the work virtually traverses up and down the Cherwell Valley, tracing elements of my own walks during the year. A continuously evolving montage is created as new image builds on old, sometimes pristine like a National Geographic photograph, at other times beaten and faded like paint peeling off an old door - each moment a unique image.

This projection in this work was carefully masked and colour / brightness corrected to allow the beautiful textures of the reclaimed timber to show through, and give the impression of a continually changing painting. Each tree photograph used as raw material was tagged with its GPS location, and the order of images was chosen by the computer finding different routes between the various trees. This changing order along with the different ways images interacted with what came previously, allowed a work to emerge where each moment was different to all those that had preceded it. The carefully mapped archive of source material juxtaposed with the transient nature of the work an attempt to echo and subvert the traditional context of the museum.

Trees of the Cherwell Valley was shown alongside the interactive installation Sound Pool, another work created specifically for the museum during the Resonance residency. Both works were created using my own software. The residency and the exhibition were financially supported by Arts Council England and Cherwell District Council, and project managed by Victoria Leighton.