Natalie Jeremijenko — OneTrees — cloned-tree art-science project

1998

Artists: Natalie Jeremijenko · Year: 1998 · Medium: Bio-art / data-art hybrid — 1,000 genetically identical walnut-tree clones planted at multiple sites, their differential growth tracked and presented as data · Substrate: Cloned walnut trees (Juglans californica); distributed plantings across Bay Area sites; long-term growth documentation; networked data presentation · Place: San Francisco / New York, USA · Institution: Independent; later NYU Environmental Health Clinic (xClinic) Natalie Jeremijenko's OneTrees (1998 onward) is a bio-art project that planted 1,000 genetically identical cloned walnut trees across multiple sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and tracked their differential growth over years. Each tree is genetically identical to every other tree in the project; each is planted in a different local environment — urban, suburban, industrial, pristine. Over time, the trees grow differently. The project makes visible, through a slow natural experiment, the environmental factors that would otherwise be invisible: air quality, soil composition, water access, pollution exposure. OneTrees is art in a specific and non-obvious sense. Its compositional decisions are ecological and epistemic rather than aesthetic — choosing which sites to plant, choosing walnut rather than some other species, choosing to track across decades rather than weeks. The art-content is the investigative framework. Jeremijenko has argued consistently that art can be a research methodology rather than an object-production methodology, and OneTrees is her clearest demonstration. The project has been exhibited at the Whitney, MASS MoCA, and internationally. Her subsequent work — xClinic at NYU, her environmental-health interventions, her mobile air-quality sensing — has extended the same investigative-art methodology across different subjects. She teaches at NYU and continues to work at the art-science-environmental-health intersection. Lore Jeremijenko trained in engineering before turning to art; her early career included research at Xerox PARC. OneTrees was partly funded through art grants and partly through environmental-science collaborations. Several of the 1,000 trees have died or been removed; the project's documentation has tracked losses as data points. The New York Botanical Garden and several other institutions have hosted surviving OneTrees specimens. Sources • Jeremijenko, Natalie — xdesign.ucsd.edu and subsequent archives • NYU — Environmental Health Clinic records • Whitney Museum — Jeremijenko collection