Fascinated by the rings that trees develop as they grow, artist Bartholomäus Traubeck created a new way for those rings to tell the history of the tree that formed them. Traubeck designed a record player that could read the rings of a tree, using the tree rings to create input signals that can then be translated through the use of programming to create a musical output.

Traubeck explains of his work:
"A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently."

It's pretty magical to see how nature can so directly translate into music, and it makes me wonder what else out there has a rhythm and sound just waiting to be found...​