What the Trees Told Me
IED Barcelona – Student: Jaime De Candole
Academic year
2024/2025
‘What the Trees Told Me’ is a data-driven, sensory installation exploring the relationship between human well-being and environmental health. The project investigates a central question: Does emotional and physiological well-being mirror the health of the environment we inhabit?
To test this, the student undertook a self-led, eight-week-long experiment across two contrasting settings: four weeks living off-grid in a remote woodland, followed by four weeks in an urban city environment. In each context, the same structured routine was repeated daily — including walking barefoot, forest bathing, gardening, practising stillness, and swimming in the sea. Each activity was selected due to its documented psychological or physiological effects.
While performing these activities, the student collected a wide range of biometric and environmental data — including heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, air and noise pollution, and water pH levels, and more. These readings were then translated into a physical installation: The Forest of Fabric.
Each hanging strand represents a single data point. The colour indicates the metric; the length reflects its scale. Together, the strands form a tactile and immersive record of the fluctuating states experienced across both environments.
The installation avoids offering a singular conclusion. Instead, it invites viewers to reflect on the quiet impact of their surroundings, and the often overlooked ways in which our bodies respond to place.
By bringing together emotional experience and scientific data, ‘What the Trees Told Me’ transforms numbers into something that can be felt — not just seen.
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