Jack Wild

Escape information-overload and wait for a non-event. Sure, it might not really happen—but hey—who cares...(?)

‘At Some Point This Tree Will Fall’ is a simulation of a world, existing on a server, somewhere in the cloud. The simulation uses one of the most important and powerful algorithms in Computer Graphics, Perlin Noise, to simulate wind, which at some point will gain enough strength to blow down the tree, in which state it will stay indefinitely, in memory of an event that maybe, definitely, never happened (possibly).

Much like real-world weather systems, and the physics which govern them, the computer-generated wind is seemingly random, yet entirely predictable. With enough brain power (and too much free time) it could be calculated with 100% certainty the exact moment the tree will fall.

Complimentary to its display in the public gallery (or indeed in multiple situations simultaneously), the work is publicly accessible online using any desktop, smartphone or tablet, where visitors can create their own window into this world and see the same synchronised events of the simulation, anywhere at any time. This aspect of the work draws parallels to the rise of live video-streaming, which allows us to peek into far corners of our world, which are often no more real to us than this tree.

See the tree at http://at-some-point-this-tree-will-fall.jack-wild.com/ (if you're lucky, you might be the one to see it fall).