‘Years’ modified turntable plays a tree’s inner rings like a record

Utilizing various make-shift components, German designer Bartholomäus Traubeck has managed to create a modified record player that takes wood slices of a tree and makes music from its inner rings.

In what might give new meaning to the term “green technology” Bartholomäus Traubeck’s amazing ‘Years’ turntable takes slices of wood rings from a tree and plays them like a record.

Traubeck’s make-shift tree-spinning turntable makes use of an old-school modified record player, a PlayStation Eye Camera, and a stepper motor, which controls the record players arm. Once data is analyzed and collected, and with the help of computer running Ableton Live software (a loop-based software music sequencer), the inner rings of a tree are transformed into audible arboreal sound.

Perhaps appropriately, the music coming from the particular wood sample in the video below isn’t the most upbeat or chart-topping. And yet it seems quite fitting given the often tumultuous relationship technology and nature have both shared over the decades.