The Idea of a Tree from design duo Mischer'Traxler is one of the projects up for a DMY Award this year at the DMY Design week, and M.E. is not only impressed by the beautiful uniqueness of the products themselves, but by the machine built to make them...
The concept was inspired by a certain fascination for machines and nature; A tree is a product of its specific time and place, reacting and developing according to its surrounding and constantly recording environmental impacts in its growth process. The goal of 'the idea of a tree'- project was to bring the recording qualities of a tree and its dependence on natural cycles into products. Therefore machines were developed which are recording and producing at the same time.
Powered by nothing but sunlight and some threads, objects are grown during the course of a day. The installation is powered by a solar cells which power the entire device, causing the process to move faster or slower depending on the amount of available light. The speed of the process determines the amount of colour saturation of the thread, giving a visual recording in the resulting object.
It's a captivating process - watch a short video of the machine in action here.
