TREE TECH
An exploration of the wisdom of the trees in 50 life lessons. Tree Tech is Umair Zia’s personal journey to establish a dialogue with these centuries-old creatures that hold some of the wisest secrets available to humanity. It’s a thrilling and spiritual quest to understand biomimicry and the ancient technologies that these magnificent beings hold.
Tree Tech is an ode to listening to those who were here before us, and will be here after us.
As something becomes more complex, it becomes able to perform more functions with fewer dedicated components. Following from this attribute of complexity, a tree is seen as carrying the least number of dedicated organs compared to its innumerable functions. A Tree is a trim tab. The book presents 50 lessons for the entire humanity that are inspired by the invisible technology of the trees. The invisible technologies- deemed essential for the performance of the trees- are illustrated in a visual language familiar to the readers.
The lessons cover the topics of silence, love, memory, metaphor, death, originality, strength, gender, adaptability, control, consciousness, inclusivity, identity, trust, distance, confrontation, progress, contextualization, alliance, endurance, opinion, resilience, time, movement, action, happiness, feedback, collaboration, self- reliance, permanence, energy, synergy, greed, resources, space, certainty, growth, perception, diversity, land, pattern, knowledge, order, architecture, non-physicality, hierarchy, dependability, belonging, framework and scale.
“The 50 lessons presented in this book borrow much from my conversations with the Kalasha elders. I went to the valley in 2001 to document the architecture of the village. But as it often happens with journeys of serendipitous nature, over there I met a 50-year-old Tok tree.
The old Tok and I got acquainted on the same night Kalasha performed their famous Chaomous dance around it. The humans, women and children of the tribe wore their deep cosmic dresses and made an orbit around the tree. They danced joyfully round and round the tree under the magically embroidered purple night. There was neither a song nor music, only occasional claps synchronized clumsily with the thumps of the steps. A small boy fetched me to the ring and made me join the dance. At first, I copied their steps consciously but when no one gave heed to how horribly I danced, I decided to close my eyes and let myself follow the slow rhythm of the circling flow.
Before long, I was in a sort of a trance. I felt being held by the invisible branches of the tree- that would not let me or anyone else in the chain break off from the ring. We flowed together naturally, eternally, orbiting around the old wise Tok.
After a few days of self-conscious-architectural-documentation later, I dropped the pretentious act altogether. I sat down with an elderly Kalasha one day and inquired about the tree. The elderly Kalasha chuckled amiably and took me to the tree…” [to be continued]
By Umair Zia
Tree Tech’s primary media will be a printed book on a limited and carefully crafted edition, inspired by old medieval treaties like the Voynich manuscript.
But also an app, that will read your heartbeat through your phone camera and, once your pulse is synched with the one of a tree, it will show you one of the 50 lessons.
Only the most adventurous and committed truth seekers will be able to find all the lessons, since the user would need to synch its heartbeat with 50 different trees…
“When I read the Tree Tech manuscript, I cried. It was not only beautiful and delicate, but also deep, touching, profound. The lessons in this book should be taught in schools”
— Roxanna Shohadaee, director of the Design Science Studio
