The Sound of Light in Trees

On its surface, David Dunn’s The Sound of Light in Trees might seem like little more than an ecological exercise. Recordings of the pinyon engraver beetle and miscellaneous invertebrates eating and crawling their way between the outer bark and inner xylem of a conifer tree might sound like the stuff of nightmares for the squeamish, but Dunn’s collaging is all the more endearing for its specificity. What we encounter is mind-openingly real. The more we immerse ourselves in its 59 minutes of crackling and squeaking, the more we realize that skin is a container for the oldest of worlds.