A hollow tree trunk, more than two metres tall, worked by sixteen beaters that strike it in irregular rhythms, now sparse, now dense. Critici Ostinati Ritmici Aumentata is a sound and kinetic installation by Roberto Pugliese: each strike on the wood corresponds to trees lost or damaged somewhere in the world, and forest loss enters the room as rhythm, impact and vibration.
The work only comes to life when someone approaches: whoever listens becomes part, if only for a moment, of a disaster happening elsewhere.
The original work: Critici Ostinati Ritmici
The work is the “Aumentata” (augmented) version of Critici Ostinati Ritmici, a piece first created in 2010, when Roberto Pugliese turned a hollow trunk into a percussion instrument connected to the internet. The trunk translated the overall figure for global deforestation into strikes: a single planetary average, played as a steady rhythm.
Sixteen years later Pugliese decided to reactivate it, not because the technology had become obsolete, but because the problem persists and there are now new ways of knowing it. The title, unchanged since 2010, takes on an additional meaning: an “ostinato” is a musical figure that keeps returning, and today it also points to a problem that is still there.
Hence “Aumentata”, which has nothing to do with augmented reality: the work no longer plays only the global average, but also real events, each located in a specific place on Earth, and it keeps a memory of them.
The trunk is made of two longitudinal halves that had begun to pull apart as the wood dried. In 2026 it was restored and stabilised. The part that could not be closed was filled and coloured gold: the repair remains visible as part of the work’s material history, with a symbolic reference to kintsugi.
How it works
The work regularly receives satellite data from NASA’s OPERA programme, which flags places on Earth where vegetation has changed from its usual state, for example because of logging, fire or a storm. These data are cross-referenced with a scientific map of global tree density to estimate how many trees are involved in each event. The system translates this estimate into strikes on the trunk, one for each tree. Each event has its own intensity and duration, and the rhythm changes accordingly.
The strikes come from the beaters: small hammers made of a rod driven by an electromagnet, with a wooden ball at the tip. Every strike is wood on wood. Behind it are satellites, servers and software, but the artist chooses not to put them on display: the technology disappears behind the impact.
In the configuration designed for exhibition, known as hybrid, the work brings its two versions into dialogue. Most of the time it plays the localised events; every five to ten events, however, the trunk returns to the annual global figure for tree loss, as it did in 2010. Given the scale of the phenomenon, each of these strikes corresponds to 50 trees. Listening thus moves from a single place to the whole planet, and back.
The presence of the audience
With no one around, the work stays on but silent: it starts when someone approaches, thanks to a small radar sensor. Visitors do not control the sound and do not play the instrument: their presence is what brings the process to the surface.
Next to the trunk, a page showing the data, location and parameters of the current event can be projected or displayed on a screen.
About Roberto Pugliese
Roberto Pugliese (Naples, 1982) lives and works between Naples and Rome. His research draws on two artistic currents: sound art and kinetic and programmed art. Using software-driven mechanical devices that interact with one another, with their surroundings and with the viewer, he explores phenomena related to sound, the processes the human mind uses to tell natural structures from artificial ones (both acoustic and visual), and the relationships between humans and technology and between art and technology. Pugliese has exhibited in museums and galleries including Teatro Anatomico, Bologna; Museo degli Affreschi, Verona; IED, Madrid; MUSE, Trento; Tenuta Lo Scompiglio, Vorno; Villa Brandolini, Pieve di Soligo; TRA, Treviso; Fondazione Gervasuti, Venice; Gallerie Mazzoli, Berlin; Città della Scienza, Naples; Galleria Studio la Città, Verona; Palazzo Barberini, GNAM and Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Marfa, Texas.
He has received awards from Ars Electronica, Linz; Fundación Telefónica, Madrid; and VAF, Rome.
Credits
- Work by Roberto Pugliese
- Una produzione Scg, a cura di Sineglossa, finanziata dall’Unione Europea – Next Generation EU tramite bando TOCC Transizione Organismi Culturali e Creativi del Ministero della Cultura e gestito da Invitalia.
- Data sources: NASA OPERA DIST-ALERT, distributed by LP DAAC; tree density model by T. W. Crowther et al., Nature, 2015