Woven Trees

The rhizosphere is the area of soil or substrate surrounding plant roots, and is an intricate underground ecosystem of interactions between the host plant, microbes, fungi, and other plants and animals. On some trails on which I regularly hike, this underground world is both partly exposed and obviously changed by erosion; I’m intrigued by the fact that the rhizosphere can either exist fully or we can examine its scaffolding, but we can’t do both at once. 

It felt too simple to capture these complex interweavings of tree roots with one photo per subject. Instead, I aim here to do systematic quadrat sampling of each of these ecosystems, and then reconstruct them as accurately as possible from the collected visual data. The results show the distortions inherent in any sampling regime, yet also create new landscapes and shapes that better reflect the dynamic nature of these organisms than could a rectangular photo.