Joyful Trees (Diller & Scofidio + Renfro)

Arbores Laetae – or Joyful Trees – has transformed a former brownfield site as part of the 2008 Liverpool Biennial arts festival.

Designed by New York architects Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, festival bosses say the work gives people a chance to “view nature at its most unnatural”.

The slowly rotating trees, intended to be a playful reinvention of the public park, were largely welcomed by members of the public in their unveiling.

The three rotating trees can found at the heart of 17 hornbeam trees planted in a grid pattern at the corner of Great George Street and Parliament Street, but are not immediately obvious to passing pedestrians or traffic. In place of the familiar movement of shade according to the rotation of the earth around the sun, here shade migrates at an artificial speed, transforming the familiar patterns of the natural world into artificial creations.

Some people find their unfamiliar shading patterns tranquil and others, unsettling, which was the aim, according to designer, Rick Scofidio.

Mr Scofidio told BBC News: “I found that it’s both beautiful, wonderful and a little bit frightening.

“Trees in poems are beautiful objects, but they are also things that tap on your window at night and in many fairy stories are quite evil and dangerous.

Source Music Columbia