Tree of Fortune

YEAR: 2004
ROLE: Artistic Director
FORMAT: Electronic Text Installation/Public Art
WITH: Linda Carolli (Writer)

WHAT: Installation of 130 LED scrolling text boxes wired within a tree displaying messages and texts that talk to private reflection and imagining.

Tree of Fortune was a major public artwork comprising of 130 LED scrolling text boxes distributed throughout a large tree.  Each module displayed an individual scrolling message presented in red LED text, created in collaboration with Brisbane writer Linda Carolli. The work was commissioned for and presented in a prominent riverbank location at Christchurch’s 2004 Biennial. It was accompanied by a high quality catalogue publication.

The project sought to foster private reflection amongst its viewers around the context of contemporary ecological crises, whilst also calling upon the power of their imagining as a method for retaining positive and critical mindsets in the face of adversity. This was achieved through ostensibly presenting texts in the form of ‘fortune cookie’ style statements, but then configuring them to require a personal response. This sense of unraveling questions and answers was further cemented through the qualities of each scrolling text, which only revealed a small part of each phrase at any one time.

SHOWING HISTORY:
1: Tree On the Avon Riverbank, Adjacent to Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings, Christchurch, LightSCAPE, Christchurch Urban Arts Biennial, 1–11 September, 2004. Curators Dr Deidre Brown & Jonathan Mane-Wheoki.