This is a record player that creates music by reading the year rings in slices of wood. Note that more than one 'record' is played in the video.
YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.
The artist coated these thin slices of wood with an acrylic glass veneer to read the rings as a record player does the grooves on a record. As the artist explains, the tree's year rings are analyzed by the player for their strength, thickness, and rate of growth and this data is the basis for a generative process that produces piano music. Each type of tree ring creates a different type of music.
In the video, the first record in the video is a fir tree that makes a minimalistic sound, the second is a more complexly textured ash tree. Each 'record' is a sonic representation of the tree whose life was recorded in its rings. Music from one of nature's myriad motifs. BP