Maria Thrän
AEOLIAN TREE
Live electromagnetic–kinetic three-channel pendulum antenna sculpture
and ritual performance · 2025
The artistic research for AEOLIAN TREE begins with Thrän’s childhood in Dankmarshausen, Germany, and the tradition of the “Dorfbaum”—the village tree as a place of gathering, memory, mourning and celebration across cultures and histories. For Thrän, trees were companions and places to play, hide and sing—an embodied knowledge that remains throughout their life.
From the right: Maria Thrän’s mother and father in the forest, alongside examples of village trees in Großensee and northern Germany (4S conference presentation).
AEOLIAN TREE is an electromagnetic–kinetic antenna sound sculpture and ritual performance under a tree. The ritual frames the work: a practice of caretaking and shared attention that treats the tree as a sacred, living archive—a portal between spiritual and physical worlds, between ancestors and the present. An invitation to listen in relation within community alongside non-human worlds, share a song and whisper collectively as a form of worldmaking to remember under a tree.
Three pendulum antennas, each hung from a separate branch, form a triadic constellation around the trunk. This geometry holds harmonic symmetry and gentle dissonance, centering the tree as the anchor where natural, technological, and human rhythms meet.
Performance ritual, enacted at SPAM Media Festival, Seattle, 2025
Installation view, SPAM, 2025
AEOLIAN TREE, installation view at night. SPAM Media Festival, 2025.
Materials: three piano-string antennas, three electromagnetic coils, three magnetic pendulum bobs, Arduino, software-defined radio (SDR), eight-channel audio interface, three-channel sound system
Software: Reaper, A++
Performance ritual: two stereo speakers, microphone, SuperCollider
Signal: live electromagnetic radio frequencies, tuned to a military band
Sound: low-frequency, drone-based composition shaped by kinetic signal feedback
Installation & technical construction: Maria Thrän
Technical consultation: Matt Reynolds
Exhibited and performed live at SPAM Media Festival, September 2025
Listen on STEGI RADIO
Conference Presentations
{Techno}Magic · 4S Conference · Seattle, 2025
AEOLIAN TREE
Portals of the Oak’s Breath: Animistic {Techno}magic from the Forest
Invited to the {Techno}Magic panel at the 4S Conference in Seattle, Maria Thrän presented AEOLIAN TREE as a work in process, exploring ritual care and co-voicing as methods in performance. The presentation asked how environmental sound, electromagnetic signals, an inherited lullaby and multilingual whispers could be practised as care, rather than captured as data.
The presentation followed the ritual’s three movements—Attunement, Invocation and Co-Voicing—from silent listening, through a lullaby passed between generations, to an audience whispering meaningful words in their own languages. It proposed shared listening as a way to build relations between people, the living tree and technology.
Panel organizers: Afroditi Psarra, Gabrielle Benabdallah and Sadaf Sadri.
Artistic Research Presentation · Performance Study Conference, PSi 30 · XXX Crossroads
Artistic Research Working Group · Fortaleza, Brazil · 11–15 December 2025
Following the presentation in Seattle, Maria Thrän was invited to share AEOLIAN TREE within the Artistic Research Working Group workshop at PSi 30. Their contribution asked what forms of relation, refusal and co-presence emerge when the performer is no longer at the centre and care becomes the score.
The research lets the living tree lead the rhythm, moving from quiet attunement through singing to collective whispering. Each movement is a practice of care: waiting for the site to set the tempo, offering a melody to the tree, and making space for participants’ own words, names and breaths. Within the working group, participants exchanged questions from their artistic research and responded to one another through their own practices.
Convenors: Annette Arlander, Bruce Barton and Johanna Householder.