Trees as Visual Thinking

The work forwards an aesthetic and sensory reflection concerning the presence of trees in our contemporary landscapes, namely in urban contexts, conceiving them as "visual thought." Their materiality, mutability, and imagistic charge shape the individual and collective experience of places, transforming the perception and experience of space. The project starts by observing the differences between spaces inhabited by trees and those whose absence is noted, exploring at the same time the implications of this presence in constructing the urban imaginary. The work falls under the theme "Exploring Contemporary Realities," articulating an artistic journey and a theoretical essay anchored in photographic representation as a research tool. In addition to photography, audiovisual and sound capture are used, exploring the relationship between still images, moving images, and sounds, in a synesthetic approach that prioritises the perception and affective experience of the landscape. The research focuses on the changing effects caused by trees: the visual impermanence generated by light and wind, tonal and chromatic variations, the metamorphosis of shadows, the movement of leaves and trunks, and the sounds of other living beings that inhabit them. These elements will be collected and analysed in a dynamic between sound and silence, noise and natural melody, allowing for the creation of visual and sound compositions, eventually integrated into installations. Inspired by Aby Warburg and his expression "the external cause of the image", where wind is a vehicle of emotion and pathos, the essay proposes an approach in which the body, in interaction with the landscape, actively participates in the redefinition of places. Accordingly, the sensitive mediation between body and space becomes the core of an artistic process, and by doing so, it reveals the uniqueness of trees as agents of transformation and meaning in the contemporary urban environment. Cover image: “Untitled"