Travels | Leonardo/ISASTwith Arizona State University

Travels

By Devavani Chatterjea
To enter another world you must first find an opening …baby, air and light and time and space have nothing to do with it. - Charles Bukowski treepixels Hemetca Sii, Anthony Heinz-May, 2014   The artist who de/constructed a tree spent some time shaping the wood into fist-sized blocks, wiring them into a checkerboard of bark and core, then floating them out into a branch refracted in an invisible pool above the forest floor. I swim through time to get there and reach my fingers to the rough weathered wood. I turn, and dive deeper into the cool air glinting with sunlight reflected from the pool where the creek has paused before its rocky sojourn downstream. Water striders ripple the orange salamander swimming in the pool momentarily pixelating it into only the faintest suggestion of amphibian. Dust motes and insects shift their shapes into each other and the forest thrums with a deep anticipation splintered by the rhythm of water on stone. In this moment, air and light and time and space have everything to do with it. The trees begin to telegraph their cues to one another and before I know what is happening, they reach down and peel the fabric of the universe away in a single practiced swoop. I am standing on a mossy rock in a world where everything looks familiar but nothing is the same.