Trees, Time, and Technology: Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology

As we confront escalating environmental concerns and societal inequities, trees remind us of the interconnectedness of our histories, our landscapes, and our collective futures. Drawing inspiration from the landscape of Los Angeles, the science of tree dating, advances in AI, and Jewish thought (from the Tree of Knowledge to the holiday of Tu B’Shevat), artists Ken Goldberg and Tiffany Shlain create an interactive, multi-sensory installation that explores both emerging technologies and the ancient wisdom of trees. The exhibition features large cross-sections of tree species commonly found in LA with evocative timelines burned into the wood referencing the intertwined relationship between nature and human history. Goldberg and Shlain also create a large-scale portrait of Los Angeles using the Auto-Arborist Dataset that includes a taxonomy of tree images and data released by Google in 2022. The tree portrait conveys the rich diversity of trees, the stark inequality of tree canopy coverage across neighborhoods, and a new way of seeing LA.