Go to your neighbourhood streets at any time in the day and observe the roadside trees; take a photo of a tree that is tied to supporting structures and submit it to this Google map.
Significance:
For an earlier work called Ways To Tie Trees, I went on walks around neighbourhoods and identified trees that had been staked and bound in various ways. Using Google Maps as a tool to trace my sightings, I began to wonder what a crowdsourced map of tied trees might look like.
Similar to many cities around the world, trees in Singapore are uprooted and relocated to conform to a controlled cityscape determined by urban planning. A digital marker for a tree engages participants in the act of observing individual trees and their state of existence in the garden city of Singapore through photography. The gesture of photographing creates an interaction between the image-maker and the selected tree, setting up an intimate encounter for attention and care. In contributing the photograph on a collaborative Google Map, each exchange with a tree is recorded to create a collective mapping of trees, and the permutations in which they exist.
*How to mark a tree on Google Map via an Internet browser:
1. Open up the map by clicking on this link
2. In the search bar, type in the address where you found the tree. You can use the name of a street or address of a building to anchor the pin.
3. A pin with a pop-up bubble should appear. Click on ‘+ Add to map’ in the pop-up.
4. Click on the ‘Edit’ icon (pencil symbol).
5. Click on ‘Add image or video’ icon (camera symbol) on the bottom right corner of the pop-up. You can also edit the address to be more specific (e.g. ‘In front of XXX’ / ‘Along XXX’).
6. Save your edits. You have contributed a marker to a tree!