Tales of a Great Tree
Visual-Sound Installation

At the roots of a great tree, a makeshift seat will be placed, inside which an Arduino with a built-in light sensor will be installed. It will be connected to a DFplayer and a speaker positioned among the tree’s branches.

As soon as a visitor chooses to sit down, they will hear the tree’s first story, recorded in my own voice.

There are eight different stories, each in a separate file stored on a micro SD card. Each person will be able to hear one story—unless they stand up and sit down again, in which case they will hear the next one.

The stories are fictional, my own creations, but they could have happened somewhere, sometime. They describe scenes from people’s lives, events, emotions, and moments that the tree has witnessed throughout its long existence.

These are stories of people who have interacted with the tree, who have felt and understood its sensitivity and memory.

The idea for this project was born because I am one of those people who love and manage to “communicate” with trees. Beyond their multifaceted and invaluable contribution to our brief lives, trees are also profound philosophical symbols. They connect depth and darkness with height and absolute light, in the endless story of evolution.

I hope that, once completed, this work will succeed in stirring something within us.

idea, writing, recitation, construction : Artemis Agathopoulou
educatinal support : Vasilis Alexandrou
credits to : Danil Kant

Artemis Agathopoulou was born in 1981 in Ioannina. She is a visual artist, a graduate of the Athens School of Fine Arts (from the studio of Panos Charalambous), a performer, actress, and poetess. She holds a diploma in Acting for Theatre and Cinema from EOPPEP, has attended the Performance Department of the University of Patras, the Scenography Workshop of the National Theatre, and has studied, among other things, Commedia Dell’Arte with Panagiotis Stathopoulos and Camilo Bedancor, clowning techniques with Andre Casaca and Irene Michailidis, and the method of Theodoros Terzopoulos with Terzopoulos himself and Savvas Stroubos.  She spent years traveling in a modified 1975 VW van and has worked both in Greece and abroad (street art, music performances, land art, installations, etc.), participating in exhibitions and festivals. She has published two poetry collections and a theatrical monologue, which she performs herself (Living Simply, Ahna, Dimensions, available at www.nikasbooks.gr). She experiments with various musical instruments and collaborates as a songwriter and performer with musicians Panagiotis Mitsis in Ahna (www.axna.bandcamp.com) and Nikola Bondina in the loop project “We the Wonders, They the Business.”  She is the artistic director of Theatro Faos in Igoumenitsa, which has been operating as a venue since the spring of 2023.  Currently, she is preparing her third poetry collection  "Without a Branch" and is pursuing a master’s degree in Audiovisual Arts in the Digital Age at the Ionian University.  She lives in Faskomilia, Thesprotia and travelling.