The Forest and the Trees
Students create an immersive, multimedia installation, The Arb Experience
For generations, Colby students have gone to the woods around the College for lots of reasons: to do research projects with their classes; to walk and run; or just to relax and unwind while surrounded by trees and nature.
Three of those students, Mollie Block ’27, Rachel Hernandez ’27, and Rafi Aronson ’27, have used their love of the Perkins Arboretum and Bird Sanctuary and the other forested land at the College as a creative springboard to make something special they hope will inspire more people to visit and protect these places. With the support of the Lyons Art Lab, they imagined, created, and installed The Arb Experience, an immersive exhibit that is open through May 11 at Greene Block + Studios.
Through the year-long process of doing the installation, they each delved into their individual disciplines—music for Aronson, filmmaking for Block, and photography for Hernandez—and into the history of the arboretum, known colloquially as the arb, and the other Colby woodlands.
“One of our main goals is showcasing the arb and getting people talking about it, and getting people out there,” said Block, an environmental policy and studio art double major. “We intend to keep the wheels moving even after the installation closes. This is definitely not the last that anybody will be hearing about the arboretum.”
Annie Kloppenberg, associate professor of performance, theater, and dance and director of the Lyons Arts Lab, said that it has been exciting to see the project unfold over the course of the year. The lab offers students the opportunity to explore and advance their creative work; often, the chance to learn and grow through experiential education matters as much as the end product and the professor prioritizes that sense of discovery in the creative process.
“That experiential learning piece is, I think, really exciting,” Kloppenberg said.
A multidisciplinary approach
Through The Arb Experience, Block, Hernandez, and Aronson use a multidisciplinary approach to give visitors a sense of what they have appreciated about the woods since they arrived on campus.
People are invited to enter the installation by walking on a wooden plank boardwalk, identical to the ones that allow walkers and hikers to cross over boggy parts of the woods while keeping their shoes dry.
Then, they are surrounded by Hernandez’s photos of the forest in all seasons: the leafy luxuriance of spring and summer, the changing woods of autumn, and the spare black-and-white of the snow-covered landscape in the winter. They may notice their heart rate slow and their breathing quiet as they take in Block’s videos of the forest and as they listen to Aronson’s evocative soundtrack, which uses bioacoustic technology to literally transform the electric energy from living organisms he found in the arboretum into music.
At the end, visitors are invited to write notes sharing what they enjoy and love about the woods, and support efforts to expand the protected portion of forest and create a position of arboretum manager.
“We just want people to see that this is a guaranteed resource for everybody,” said Aronson, a music and science, technology, and society double major. “It’s a bridge between the school and the rest of the community.”
The beginning
The impetus for the project started last year, when Aronson was involved as a pianist with IN TANDEM: The Unconventional Fashion Experience. It made him think about other possibilities for cross-disciplinary projects and collaborations. He talked to Kloppenberg about ideas, especially for making bioacoustic music.
“Rafi gained exposure to the lab as an IN TANDEM participant and collaborator, and that ignited his imagination and sense of cross-disciplinary possibilities,” Kloppenberg said.
Block and Hernandez were up for the challenge. The trio had been friends since they first came to Colby, and one of their shared interests was being in nature. In fact, Hernandez, who is originally from Texas, chose to come to Colby in part because of the Island Campus. Knowing that there were woodlands located just a short walk from her dormitory “would have been even more of an incentive,” the science, technology, and society and studio art double major said.
“We were all interested in doing an art project on the arb,” Hernandez said. “Rafi said, ‘Oh, I could create a plant album.’ And I said, ‘I could do photography for it.’ Then all of our ideas just combined, and we decided to do a big project.”
A course that Aronson took last year led him to want to learn more about the arb. “It led me down a rabbit hole. I needed to uncover as much history about the Colby woods as possible,” he said.
To that end, he went to Miller Library to see what he could find in Special Collections & Archives. He enjoyed the process so much he applied for a campus job as an archivist. Among his finds are original deeds, maps, and a 1973 field guide, which have all become part of the installation. He learned that of the 420 acres of woodlands, only about 30 percent is officially protected as Perkins Arboretum. He also discovered a missing piece.
“The record is very spotty in the 21st century,” Aronson said. “There’s a lot of research that is done in the woods. Professors use it like a classroom, but there aren’t many things in the public record. So many people interact and care about these woods, but there isn’t much of a tangible trace of it.”
That’s something that he, Block, and Hernandez wanted to change.
An immersive process
Over the course of the year, each student worked on individual projects as well as their combined project. Hernandez did a year-long independent study that culminated with the publication of a book of photos, Woods on the Hill, which will be added to Special Collections & Archives.
“I went through all parts of the arb at least once a week, no matter the weather,” she said. “After the rain is one of my favorite times to go because everything is really lush and wet and pretty.”
Block made On Tree Time, a 14-minute documentary that explores the past, present, and potential future of the arb. In it, she interviewed alumni, students, faculty, staff, and Waterville community members about what the land means to them. She also went out in all conditions, including frigid temperatures, to get the shots she needed.
“I hope it makes people excited, and I hope it makes people care and want to protect the woods,” she said. “A big thing for me is that I hope people watch it and then want to go to the Arb, as simple as that.”
For Aronson, the plants were his musical collaborators. He used PlantWave, a tool that converts electrical signals from plants into notes, and attached sensors to mosses and mushrooms. He also used microphones to record birdsong, leaves rustling, the wind, the stream, and more. Aronson combined the field recordings and the sounds from the plants with his own synthesizer music. He used two of the tracks he created in the installation, and he also just released a nine-track album on Arbor Day in April, The Unheard Half.
The culmination of the work
The process of turning inspiration into installation was labor intensive. The students worked over the fall semester and into the winter to build their body of work, and with the support of the Lyons Arts Lab, went to New York City with Kloppenberg to visit immersive exhibitions, performances, film, traditional museums, and art galleries.
“They started to develop an understanding of which kinds of things they really liked, and what they thought that they could do,” Kloppenberg said. “That was the catalyst for starting to think about what their installation might be like.”
When they were finally ready to load the installation into the Greene Block + Studios, they grappled with technical difficulties, but still persevered.
“When things are messy and go wrong, it’s a really important part of the creative process,” Kloppenberg said. “Problem-solving and troubleshooting can be frustrating, but it’s also just part of the reality.”
For the students, opening night was “chaotic” and more than a little challenging, but it was still a joy to welcome others to the world they had spent so long building. The exhibition has been up and running daily since then, with members of the public and others wandering in to experience it.
One of those people is Jon Eustis ’69, who lives in Waterville on the edge of the Perkins Arboretum. When he and his wife visited the exhibition, they liked it so much that they are planning to meet Block, Hernandez, and Aronson to learn more about the students’ processes and perspectives.
“We thought it was wonderful. … We’re obviously huge fans and advocates for the arboretum,” Eustis said. “It’ll be really fun to talk to the creators. It’s so nice to know there’s such interest in the arb, as the kids call it.”
Knowing that their work resonates with the public feels meaningful to the students who created the exhibition.
“I learned so much in many different parts of this project,” Block said. “Not only can we create art that we’re passionate about and have our own creative freedom, but we can also actually maybe make a difference at the College.”
