Gale Tree

Lumen & Logic

A tree in a gale, drawn without ever drawing a tree. Every mark on the sheet is the same mark — one continuous, uniform-width hairline — and every hairline is born at a single hub and pointed radially away from it, then progressively handed over to a wind field as it travels. Near the hub the radial direction still wins, so a few hundred strands run parallel and the trunk appears; further out the wind takes over and the same strands splay, comb and coil into a crown, wrapping whole turns around explicit vortices and streaming off the downwind edge. A second family launched into the lower half-plane keeps its radial heading almost to the edges and lays down the ground fan. A share of strands loop once through a closed curl; a few escape as long clean strays across empty sky. Colour follows the wind rather than a light source: hairs launched windward take the blacks and the deep greens, hairs launched downwind take burnt orange, amber, gold and the pale straw highlights, so the mass reads as a dark compressed shoulder against a hot streaming lee side with no shading anywhere.

Medium

Generative algorithm, archival pigment print

Dimensions

60 × 90 cm