Trees "shaped" into sculptures

Images Pooktre People-Trees People-Trees-16

Peter Cook and Becky Northe of Queensland, Australia use wire frameworks to "guide" trees into interesting live sculptures, including figures, chairs, tables, and other stranger shapes.

Pooktre has perfected a Gradual shaping method, which is the shaping of trees as they grow along predetermined designs. Designing and setting up the supporting framework are fundamental to the success of a tree. Some are intended for harvest to be high quality indoor furniture and others will remain living art.

Pooktre Tree Shapers

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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StevieB

It’s worth checking out treeshapers.net as well.
Heartfruit

Rather like a full sized bonzai tree. Bonzai growers use wire to shape their tortured baby trees all the time.
- CastanhasDoPara
  
  Hoping that your hyperbole is in jest. In any case ‘tortured baby’ makes it seem as if bonsai is a brutal and painful process done in the interest of being sadistic to trees. While it is an unnatural and unusual method of plant care I don’t really think there is any intent to harm. The bonsai artist uses slow and consistent coercion to achieve an aesthetically pleasing form. And many of these extraordinarily well cared for trees live very long (probably happy) lives, some are known to be hundreds of years old in fact.
  - Guest
    
    I agree. Slowly and while using force, altering the genetically predetermined shape of a living thing’s appendages to achieve a pleasing miniaturized form need not be motivated by sadism or brutality. It could be an expression of love.
    
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942
    - Iscah
      
      What a revolting analogy. Trees are not women.
      - Guest
        
        True. I like trees at least as much as I like women, and I’m very fond of trees. To see either deformed for aesthetic reasons sickens me.
      - solitaire
        
        Oh noes, look at all these deformed trees!
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Porta_-_Gran_Mesquita_de_Kairuan.jpg
      - Gulliver
        
        So I take it you’re none too big on piercings then. Or lawn mowing.
Lane Rasberry

If you printed it out single space in 12 point font, the discussion on Wikipedia over the name of this art form would be at least 100 pages. It is among the longer-running and more contentious non-political disputes, largely because various practitioners of it want their preferred terminology used. Note that the above picture has a logo – it is a branding war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Tree_shaping
- DaveTonight
  
  Any artist is entitled to sign their own work.
BarBarSeven

One day the trees will rise up and “guide” you gelatinous human meatsacks into a more appealing framework! Get some knots in your trunk and loose some leaves already!
tsa

I want a chair like that in my garden!
baronkarza

There used to be a big park of shaped trees, sort of a roadside attraction, in Scotts Valley, California, between San Jose and Santa Cruz. It was called Tree Circus, and was created by a Swedish immigrant named Axel Erlandson. Later the land was bought by someone else who installed dozens of giant replica dinosaurs on the site and renamed it “The Lost World”. We never went there as kids, as it was rarely open, but loved to drive by it and see dinosaurs and the nearby “Santa’s Village” on family trips to the beach at Santa Cruz. Some of the trees remain at Gilroy Gardens amusement park in Gilroy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Erlandson
SarekOfVulcan

The tree shaping dispute on Wikipedia got all the way to the Arbitration Committee, where various practitioners were banned for a full year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tree_shaping
MandoSpaz

Can’t anyone else hear the trees screaming in agony? Oh, the torture!

Won’t someone think of the trees?
Guest

Trees shaped to look like humans. What an appropriate reflection of the art.
origilla

Why the quotes around the word “shaped”?
Gulliver

I was going to sarcastically concern troll, but I’ve been beat to the punch. So here’s a (bad) joke.

Bonsai: “Don’t hate me because I’m different. My creator made me this way.”

Bush: “Nonsense. Topiary’s a choice, you unnatural abomination.”

Bonsai: “Get bent.”
i_prefer_yeti

Love the concept. Hate the aesthetic.
countablyinfinite

There’s something about this that reminds me of orthopaedic braces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthotics ). We shape people into forms we deem better/healthier/more aesthetically pleasing all the time, without even getting into body modification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_modification ).
Calimecita

It may be appropriate to remember at this point that trees (as most plants) grow in modules. Unlike a mammal, that does indeed have genetic instructions to build 4 limbs (and will end up with 4 limbs, no more and no less, except in cases of abnormal development), a tree is not born with a predetermined number of branches, and it grows continually as long as the conditions are favorable. Their final shape depends on the interaction of their growing modules with external factors (including, now, the people who engage in this art, craft, practice or whatever they prefer to call it).
wobinidan

I don’t think the trees are necessarily suffering, but I do dispute the mentality of people that presumably think they’re ‘at one with nature’ while forcing trees to comply to their desires.
- Jake Eskel
  
  Are they forcing the trees? The way these people do it is by convincing the tree that the environment they are in makes them grow best in the shape of a chair. The tree grows as it sees best.
  
  Training a tree to take a certain shape is a lot like teaching a child. You tell the child that if they want desert they should be good. The child changes, becomes good, and gets desert. The tree is told that it can grow better in shape XYZ, so it does. The child grows to prosper in his/her environment, and the tree grows to prosper because of what it knows of the environment it is in.
  
  Which is the abuse?
http://twitter.com/CSJamesAdams James Adams

Trees are people too, you guys. We should accept them for who they are.
onepieceman

Photo is great. Comments are truly bizarre.
Sarah Neptune

The tree chair that the guy in the photo is sitting on looks like a menorah!
trees are usually deceased before serving as chairs.
Soliloquy

I have a dark desire to see the tree people on fire.
pauljodi

No, this is a bad thing. The human desire to scew with the natural world for fun and profit must be suppressed.
- Jake Eskel
  
  Can you explain why this is a bad thing?
- Gulliver
  
  No, this is a bad thing. The human desire to scew with the natural world for fun and profit must be suppressed.
  
  Should we start with suppressing computers or medicine?
  
  The human desire to screw with the natural world should be channeled into constructive and harmless activities. Suppressing human desires neither works nor ends well. Unless you’re able and willing to commit total genocide, tinkering is here to stay. Repressing human nature under the banner of sacred cows is for religions zealots.
  
  Just my opinion, of course.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Gulliver,
    
    You really don’t need to hit Enter after the blockquote tag. You’re just creating more white space.
    - Gulliver
      
      Noted, and thanks for the tip. My HTML-fu is weak :/