I began this project in 2019 as part of my Artist Residency at AUT (Auckland University of Technology). My initial focus was on scanning Tāne Mahuta, but the pandemic allowed me to expand the scope of the project to encompass other New Zealand trees.

Tāne Mahuta (God of the Forest) is sacred to Maori. It was an honour to be given the permission by Te Roroa iwi to ascend Tāne in the name of raising awareness of this magnificent tree, whose life is threatened by kauri dieback.

With the freedom of travel within New Zealand for most of 2020, I was able to continue to collect lidar and photogrammetric data for additional trees including the millennium tree, Taketakerau, a 2000 year old Puriri tree in Opotiki, and Ratanui, a 1500 year old northern Rata tree near Whanganui.

This expansion of the project provided the opportunity to undertake more R&D, leading to significant discoveries, results and partnerships that have elevated the results and deepened the potential around creating a digital repository of significant trees globally. Part of this success was the development of a radical new way of creating photorealistic point clouds using drone technology.