Artists Turn Tree Rings into Art

R.RE rings like time machines. They tell old stories about the Earth and its climate, and they represent wet years, dry years, and periods of growth. Artist Tiffany Shalin and her husband, Ken Goldberg, decided that they would make an ideal fabric for a group of artworks that explore the ways of art and science in nature.

Together, they collected giant comprehensive clips of trees that were already harvested from the rescue arenas and used them to create a series of tree ring sculptures, and inscriptions in wood: notes on the human pursuit of knowledge and historical timetables dating back thousands of years. These statues are displayed in a show that they collected for the Getty Museum Museum, titled “entitled” Old wisdom of future environmental science: trees, time and technology.

One of the most interesting pieces in the presentation entitled “Abstract Expression”. A giant board of Redwood shows a series of 39 EquationsWhich draws progress in mathematics from Vikaguras to ChatGPT. The schedule takes a golden spiral shape, a sporty relationship that is often present in natural structures such as NAUTILUS, and is associated with great beauty. The properties of the golden vortex, and the golden ratio on which it was built, were discussed by some of the greatest sporting minds of all ages, from Vitagors and Euclid in ancient Greece to the current scientific figures such as Oxford Roger Roger Roger.

Shlain and Goldberg say they want to create the idea that both art and mathematics are abstracts – a corridor to describe the natural world without a language. “These symbols can say a lot of purification without any words,” says Goldberg. “Therefore, they are like art in that they convey the meaning in a visual form. It is a language, but it is a language different from the text.”

The red wooded shape used in the “Shlain expression” and Goldberg helped determine what to publish it. They were studying the piece – the largest of them collected – when they noticed something. “She had these sharp edges, which have no other trees in the width,” says Shalin.

For artists, the harsh corners of the tree – which were created in the rescue process – seemed to be the basic foundations for mathematics. They started thinking about engineering and mathematics from straight lines. More than 2000 years ago, the Greek EGP has noticed the most basic forms, lines and numbers in two dimensions. “The shape of the tree loop that came from error wood is more intended to think about the piece,” says Shalin.

Artists have left an area to add more dates to the schedules on the external edges of the tree rings, which is a gesture towards our uncertain future. “These trees live in the deep past that we do not know, and they will be alive in a profound future,” says Shalin.

The exhibition is shown until March 2 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, then moves to the De Rosa Center in the San Francisco Contemporary Art.

A photo of Ken Goldberg and Tifani Shalin.

• Catherine Jamun

  Spread on February 21, 2025

  Catherine Jamun is an independent scientific writer based in Santa Monica, California, who writes about the environment, science, fatherhood and motherhood. You can find it on X (previously known as Twitter) Kategammon.

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