ARBORIZED SOCIETY SOCIEDADE ARBORIZADA

▲ Digitized 35mm black-and-white, low-sensitivity film (ADOX CHS 25)

A selective photo-documentation of the city's tree stock, exploring the mind's tendency toward anthropomorphization and pareidolia while speculating in a sci-fi manner through text on the relationship between urban arborization and the human condition.

▼ Screenshots of a webpage featuring each photographed tree georeferenced and dynamically marked on the urban grid of the Zona Sul in Rio de Janeiro.

Neuronal arborization, also known as dendritic arborization, is a crucial process in the growth and functioning of neurons. Nerve cells form branches called dendrites (from the Greek "dendron", meaning "tree") to establish new connections (synapses) that facilitate the transmission of electrochemical signals, such as those involved in brain activity.

Research in neuropsychopathology indicates that chronic stress can diminish both the number and length of dendrites in neurons across various brain regions, leading to a reduction in the intake and processing efficiency of information. Interestingly, chronic stress may also prompt growth in the amygdala, a region associated with initiating fear responses. This phenomenon has been observed in individuals experiencing conditions ranging from depression to survival events.
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This is a video caption describing the content of the video.
Arboreal Heritage / Unlike most fields of human knowledge that have progressed and expanded, urban forestry remains stagnant. A century ago, various universities worldwide included disciplines such as arboriculture, plant materials, natural construction, landscaping, and urban planning in their tree warden curriculum. However, in the present day, urban forestry is considered a trade without formal training. Lacking adequate education, often reliance on mere "common sense" is deemed sufficient to address the needs of urban trees. Meanwhile, the challenges of planning the city's afforestation are frequently entrusted to companies entirely focused on creating dazzling 3D visualizations.

On the opposite end of the spectrum lies the creation of the ideal street tree. This model tree is intended to fit into a rigid concept of aesthetics, occupy minimal space, and, most importantly, raise property values. Unfortunately, in this quest for perfection, considerations of nativeness, soil requirements, and proximity to other species are often overlooked. Such attitudes have given rise to literal tree butchers and led to numerous catastrophic decisions that gradually resulted in the devastation of a tree heritage, now growing in inadequate openings amidst concrete paving, being mutilated by drastic cuts or enduring underground gas leaks.
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The Witness / In the urban landscape, where tree bark functions as an interface between the tree and the world around it, a relationship will be established between the tree's body and the environment we construct as the extension of our own (human) bodies. In contact with the all-too-human world, the tree's body will be repeatedly subjected to friction. Being crushed, scratched or cut, it responds to these injuries by forming a new skin, known as necrophylactic periderm. This protective layer prevents micro-organisms from invading wounds and causing further harm to the inner tissues, potentially leading to the tree's death. If the traumas persist, the process of compartmentalizing the damaged tissues will continue to overlap itself, causing the formation of tumor-like growths on the bark, varying in shape and size. Through these attempts to heal and scar, the tree itself becomes an organic record of the frequently violent and deforming events of urban space and its society.

Before becoming an interdisciplinary area between psychology and statistics, psychometry, designated a kind of extrasensory faculty in which, some individuals would be capable, through mere physical contact, of "reading", or becoming aware of all the experiences that marked a particular object throughout its existence. In fact, all bodies with mass exert and are influenced by gravitational force and all bodies with mass possess their own gravitational fields, which in turn will interact with the gravitational fields of other objects in space. These be, hypothetically, sensitive to the slightest interference, perhaps even of a psychic quality, such as an emotion or a thought. Thus, in addition to physical stressors, the repetitive psychic and emotional acts of human society would also constitute a shaping force on the tree-body. In this way, the tree would become the ideal witness not only to the actions but also to the circumstances of the human surrounding, surviving over generations of the city’s inhabitants and externalizing their mentality in the (mal)formations of its own body.
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Arborized Society

a wide reaching, living complex, appearing to extend into endless bifurcations yet whose already petrified ramifications constrain its mobility and therefore impede any radical change.

Uma seletiva folo-documentação do estoque arbóreo da cidade, que enfatiza tendências da mente à antropomorfização e pareidólia. e sustenta, à maneira de ficção científica, minha especulação sobre a relação entre arborização urbana e a condição humana dos habitantes da cidade. Com o título pretendo insinuar tanto um coletivo de árvores crescendo na zona urbana, quanto uma sociedade humana que as plantou e cujas ações marcam e moldam seus corpos. Além disso, a sociedade arborizada sugere a dupla imagem de um vivo sistema com complexas bifurcações e amplo alcance, mas também das petrificadas ramificações restringindo mobilidade e. portanto, uma radical mudança. Cada fotografia (motivo dela) é georreferenciada e dinamicamente marcada na malha urbana do Rio de Janeiro.

Trata-se de fotografias analógicas digitalizadas a base de filme 35mm. preto-e-branco. de especialmente baixa sensibilidade e ampla faixa tonal ADOX CHS 25