Above: mock-up image of Sarah Bird’s Being/Tree. Rendering by Damon Claussen
MEDIA ADVISORY
CONTACT: Robin Carr, Landis Communications, robin@landispr.com; 415.766.0927
Projection of Ancient California Redwood Tree
to Arise on S.F. Ferry Building for One Night Only
Saturday, April 13th at 8 p.m. PDT
Being/Tree, a Public Art Projection, will have worldwide debut on 245-foot clock tower
WHAT:The public is invited to witness the debut of Being/Tree, the portrait of a 1500-year-old redwood tree by multimedia artist Sarah Bird that will be projected onto the 245-foot-tall clock tower of San Francisco’s iconic Ferry Building for one night only.
WHERE: Harry Bridges Plaza, San Francisco Ferry Building. Map here
WHEN: Saturday, April 13, 2024, 8-9 PM
8 PM Activities/Presentation begins
8:30 PM Projection goes live
WHO: Sarah Bird, multimedia artist
Additional speakers to be announced
INFO: www.sarahbirdstudio.com/beingtree
As the sun sets on April 13, 2024, multimedia artist Sarah Bird will debut Being/Tree, a projection of a 245-foot full-scale portrait of a rare 1,500-year-old redwood tree will appear on San Francisco’s iconic Ferry Building.
Bird’s presentation invites people to gather in the heart of the city to experience the wonder and awe that these trees evoke. “Being/Tree is a call for those of us who dwell in cities to work in concert and collaboration with the natural world to face the challenges that lie ahead, and to be aware of the role trees continue to play in our urban world,” says Bird. “The more connected we feel to redwoods and other forests, the more benefits there will be to the health of these forests and our personal well-being.”
Bird’s multi-year artistic exploration of the redwoods is chronicled in Giants Rising (dir. Lisa Landers 2024), a new feature documentary that explores the secrets and saga of the redwoods – the tallest and among the oldest living beings on Earth. This public art event is the culmination of this exploration with redwoods and will be filmed and integrated into the documentary, which will have its Bay Area premiere at the DocLands Film Festival on May 4, 2024.
The projection is made using four high-lumen projectors from an image Sarah made from a tree in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Because healthy trees grow in groves, there was no vantage point to capture the tree in a single photograph. Instead, Sarah used a drone to take hundreds of individual stills that she then stitched into the one projected image that represents the majestic tree.
Sarah Bird is available for media interviews. Images available for media usage only here.
About Sarah Bird
Sarah Bird is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on trees to investigate relationships among humans and the plant world. She is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in Film and Digital Media where she is a Fellow of the Climate Action Lab. Her dissertation, titled, “Strategies for Arboreal-Human Flourishing in the Anthropocene,” focuses on tree relationality for an entangled, restorative future to our ecological crisis. Her work has been widely exhibited. She lives in Mill Valley, Calif., and Wellfleet, Mass. More information at https://www.sarahbirdstudio.com/
About Being/Tree:
Being/Tree is an outdoor environmental art installation that brings a life-size 300+ foot
projection of a living California coast redwood tree into the urban environment.
Being/Tree is a visual and sensory experience that creates a community gathering site for a
physical and evocative experience: feeling the awe of our relative scale in relation to
earth’s tallest living beings. The image is made of light, colossal and tree-shaped. The
project sparks a conversation with the built environment and summons the rich history of
California’s iconic trees, the tallest living beings on earth.
Artist Sarah Bird in a redwood grove. Photo credit Fabian Aguirre/Giants Rising film.