Edinburgh College of Art recently sent large logs from felled trees to Real Wood Studios for milling and drying – they intend to celebrate the trees through the arts, after they had to be felled due to instability.
You can expect a highly creative response to the timber from this centuries-old college of Edinburgh University. They are bringing all their disciplines across higher education to honour the trees: art and design, architecture, history of art and music.
Tree sounds have been captured by Edinburgh College of Art’s Reid School of Music in recordings of a group of trees on the College’s grounds, before they had to be felled. You can hear an excerpt of the recordings below, showing these two perspectives.
The first part of the recording is from high up in the tree’s canopy and captures the sound of the leaves being blown by a gently breeze, or susurration, as well as the patter of a light rain shower and the more distant sounds of the Lauriston Campus and City beyond.
The second part uses an unusual recording technique to capture the internal sounds of the tree, the movement of water from the roots to the leaves, the swaying of the branches and the falling rain combine to create a more unfamiliar, internal soundscape. The College hopes that by capturing the living sounds of the tree these may be used with the sounds of the timber being crafted into new objects to capture the transformation of the tree in sound.
This recorded material can then be used by the College and students in several different ways, as the sound component of an installation, a soundtrack for an animation or film, as a starting point for a piece of music, the sound can be turned into images or analysed for patterns and structures to inform other creative processes, or any number of other approaches.
This is not the only creative life beyond being trees for this row of Swedish Whitebeams. Some of the smaller branches have been used in a Contemporary Art Practice course, which has electives around sustainable sculpture. The College’s Architecture colleagues are also considering using the wood for some of their teaching.
And some larger logs were sent to Real Wood Studios for milling and drying in October 2024. Once the milled and dried timber returns to the College, their wood and metal workshop technicians plan to make outdoor benches and seating in the College’s grounds.