‘HELLO, TREES’ BY MELISSA MONGIAT AND MOUNA ANDRAOS

The piece: “Hello, Trees” The artists: Daily tous les jours Where: Discovery Green’s Brown Promenade, 1500 McKinney Why: We can’t hear trees talking, but scientists know they communicate. Melissa Mongiat and Mouna Andraos, the tech artists commissioned to create this year’s winter sound and light installation at Discovery Green, celebrate that while nudging people to communicate with each other in fascinating ways. After visitors speak or sing a message into recorders at either end of the Brown Promenade, custom, live-processing software transforms their voices into a progressive sound and light experience. At stops along the way, speakers play back the sound, altering it slightly. At the first stop, the playback sounds fairly natural. But at successive stops, it morphs into something more digital — you, too, can sound like Laurie Anderson! — and then evolves, built from your intonations, into contemporary piano chords. Overhead, colored lights capture the track of the sound, flowing through a series of arched tubes.

It only takes one to play. But when there are multiple participants, who can speak simultaneously into the microphones from either end of the path, the conjoined sound can be quite the symphony — or cacophony.

Mongiat called the piece “a fun experiment.” She and Andraos famously created a swing set in Montreal several years ago that functioned as “a collaborative musical instrument,” lighting up and playing as humans used it. “Hello, Trees” plays with a similar idea.

The Discovery Green Conservancy has hired artists to create dazzling nocturnal experiences for several years, but previous projects were created elsewhere and adapted. “Hello, Trees” is the first installation the conservancy’s art committee has commissioned from scratch.

Daily tous les jours’ work always starts with science, but the point is to draw people closer to each other and the environment. “Cities are becoming more populated. There are a lot of questions about sustainable development and how living in cities is more sustainable than living in suburbia,” Mongiat said. “So the question of being closer to nature is important in this context; finding a new way to bring nature in.”