Ghost Trees | National Science Week 2024

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Immerse yourself in the endangered Rushworth Forest on the lands of the Ngurai-illam Wurrung people in Victoria: soar through the canopy, tunnel underground and gaze up at ancient tree trunks recreated from real-world environmental data in this mesmerising audiovisual experience. Bringing together science, data and audiovisual art, Ghost Trees offers a new way to connect to nature and reflect on our place within it - and our impacts on it.

Ghost Trees is a creative representation of big data sets captured by the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) and transformed by Australian artists James McGrath and Gary Sinclair. TERN used LIDAR scanning to capture digital ‘memories' of Rushworth Forest; environmental sensors generated three-dimensional scans for conversion into ‘point clouds'.

McGrath transformed these point clouds into moving graphics, creating a visualisation entirely from real-world data without any artificially generated content. Sinclair studied eco-acoustic site recordings and generated melodic phrases from the spatial data points of the trees. The result is an ephemeral, artistic and deeply moving portrait of what is being lost from the world.

Ghost Trees at the NFSA includes the addition of a window into other Australian ecosystems. Using the 19th century ‘Pepper's ghost' illusion, the central pod creates a shadowy touchpoint with trees in the Botanic Gardens of Sydney, Tasmania's Huon Valley and the TERN research SuperSite in the Snowy Mountains.