Motion Detection Tree

As young as it is controversial, the interdisciplinary research field of plant neurobiology brings together scientists who share a new understanding of flora life forms. They are primarily interested in the way plants perceive their environment, how they react to signals and communicate with each other. Merlin Reichart’s Motion Detection Tree seems to echo this discussion, even though the tree that the artist has placed in the foyer of the HFBK is by no means a real plant, whose intelligence can therefore only be artificial.

In general, Reichart’s installation seems to have sprung from a dystopian world of the future. The robotic tree is welded together from steel pipes and protrudes from a pile of building rubble. Not a single leaf grows on its many branches; it is as bare as in the depths of winter. Instead of fruit, it bears motion sensors connected to small solenoid rods. If you step closer, they start ticking. The more people move around it, the ticking becomes noise and can hardly be located. It seems as if the tree wants to subtly but nevertheless firmly indicate that itperceives us while we perceive it. Surveillance and the increasingly sophisticated forms it takes in the digital age, security technologies and the violence he sees manifested in them, have preoccupied Reichart for some time.

In his new installation, he expands this with a new chapter that deals with the arms race between nature and humanity. There is no doubt about who will ultimately survive this struggle. It is not man. Seen in this light, the “Motion-Detection-Tree” seems like a memento mori in times of climate change.

Beate Scheder
Hiscox Art Award
2019 HFBK Hamburg