Trees breathe in the carbon dioxide we exhale and convert it into oxygen, which we in-turn inhale. So you could say we share our breath with them, and one cannot exist without the other. They are a part of our respiratory system.

Be The Tree (since 2014) is an interactive video installation that highlights this symbiotic relationship between humans and plants. By placing your head in the oxygen tank, your face is projected onto the canopy of a leafy forest giant.

Artist Bio:

Graduated as a Digital media designer from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, NL Jasper Toeli is on mission to make you experience nature’s hidden systems. By doing so the users of his (light) artworks realize that they are also part of the wild world and walk away with a new found respect for the natural world.

He visualizes the mushroom roots that connects all the tree in a forest and provides them with nutrients and even communication. His Wood Wide Web fills the forest with fluorescent lines that glow vibrant under black light and uses laser projection mapping to so the flow of data. Or his Be the Tree that sheds light upon the symbiotic shared breath between humans and plants by projecting users faces onto blooming trees.

This work has been displayed in the public space everywhere from Essen Lightfestival to Manhattan as part of the illumination NYC.