SciArt Collaboration “Think Like an Aspen” Gives Voice to Resiliency

If a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound? More importantly, does the ecosystem surrounding that tree have a community’s worth of resiliency to withstand such damage? In a new voice piece entitled “Think Like an Aspen,” English faculty member Dr. Sweta Baniya and Center for Communicating Science faculty fellow Daniel Bird Tobin used this metaphor to explore community resilience in the face of natural disaster. 

    The pair met during the Center for Communicating Science’s SciArt collaboration incubator in spring 2021. They immediately knew that they wanted to combine Baniya’s research with Tobin’s performance talents, though the idea of an audio piece was not instantaneous. 

    “It seemed like we were able to just find some nice connections and common ground in areas of potential,” Tobin recalled about their initial meeting. “It was from that day we realized ‘We’re going to find something and go from there.’”

    Focusing on Baniya’s research, specifically her study of the 2015 Nepali earthquake and the impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, they designed a two-part project intended to spread word of Baniya’s research while also empowering her students by providing several communicating science workshops for them.

    “When we proposed this idea we had two things in mind,” Baniya explained. “One was to develop this audio product, and the other was to help the students in my class. It was a very nice exposure for the students as well as our work because everything was connected with disaster.” 

    From the very beginning, Baniya and Tobin were met with the challenge of bringing their vision to life while sustaining a long-distance connection. Tobin, who was living in New Hampshire at the time and has since taken a position in theatre at Centre College in Kentucky, conducted virtual workshops for Baniya’s senior seminar students.

    The formatting for the second part of the project was dictated by feasibility and distributability.  

    “I decided very early on in the project that an audio piece would be a really nice way to explore how the audience could be part of the piece and be actively engaged in the piece,” Tobin remembered. Baniya agreed, stressing the importance of being able to share their work with anyone who was interested. 

    “We wanted to make sure it was accessible and multimodal so it can go on various platforms and be easily accessed,” she said.

    After working on the audio piece for a few months, Baniya and Tobin found that it was not meeting their expectations. “We hit that first draft and then it was, like, ‘nah,’ and I was really at a loss at that point. I had to take time to pull back and think about new directions to take it, new ways of doing it, and new ways of approaching,” Tobin explained.

    Soon after, the idea for the current piece was underway. Although the original timeline had to be altered to allow for the switch, this new direction ultimately led to the finished piece as it is today. 

    The script Tobin followed when recording his voice was created by both of them. However, the incorporation of a Nepali saying, spoken by Baniya and repeated throughout the audio, alluded to a paper Baniya had written and just happened to fit perfectly with Tobin’s idea of symbolism. 

    “Whenever I do one of these projects, it’s sort of this combination of the direct conversation I have with the researcher, but also being able to read their work,” Tobin explained. “The line was really evocative in capturing something about the work and what it means and why it’s important. I kept coming back to that line and thinking about what it meant and how it captures that meaning. It led me to this idea of the aspens and of the tree falling and how that visual metaphor can work for the idea of resiliency.”

    The cultural significance of the Nepali saying was further emphasized by the choice to use Baniya’s voice in those sections of the piece. 

    “As soon as that line started appearing multiple times, I thought ‘We need to have another voice here.’ It just makes complete sense for this vocal piece to be a collaboration between us, just like the whole project was a collaboration between us as well,” Tobin said. 

    “I think the addition of that voice, even though it’s a very small sentence and I’m not talking throughout, I think those moments are very powerful because it helps us to connect to that grounding of resiliency. It’s a deeper connection to the project,” Baniya added.

    “Think Like an Aspen” encourages listeners to consider the aftermath of disaster – the tree fall – rather than preparation that may or may not be possible. As Baniya pointed out, “You never know when the tree will fall or what instigates that.” 

    While visualization exercises are typically meant to relax you, the creators of this piece wanted listeners to know that natural disasters have deep-rooted repercussions. Baniya explained that the piece “creates awareness that climate change is happening and disasters will not stop.” Similarly, Tobin hopes the audio piece will communicate to a wide audience: “This is important stuff. People are having real trauma and real suffering, but are also finding moments of real hope and real humanity.” 

    Baniya’s desire to communicate her work beyond publication in journals and the walls of academia was part of her motivation in the project, and her experience made her want to do more. 

    “I have always been the consumer of art,” she said. “I am always on the other side. But to directly have an opportunity to work with somebody like Daniel was an honor and a privilege. The whole process has been a lot of learning and how to think about interdisciplinary partnerships like this for the future. . .so the research I’ve done can be made accessible.”

    Ultimately, it was Tobin’s discovery of the true story of the Pando, a forest of genetically identical aspen trees in Utah currently stressed by climate change, that led to the ambiguous ending of “Think Like an Aspen.”  Tobin explained, “It only felt appropriate to let that research guide how the project actually ended. I think it points to exactly this idea of the potential for the future.”

    “Think Like an Aspen” is available now on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myzPBtBO6ZE.