Crown Shyness

What if we could connect to a far way forest through technology?

Crown Shyness is a kinetic 10-meter long installation with over 160 paper sculptures, co-created together with over 500 people.

The work captures real-time wind movements of a protected forest and translates it into a multi-sensory immersive experience.

Experiencing preservation

The installation was commissioned by the biggest Brazilian paper producer and exporter, Klabin. The essence of Klabin's activities is the exploitation of natural resources. Particularly, these are the resources at the core of the most urgent discussion in the world: the climate crisis. Trees — which is their main raw material — are the symbolic epicenter of this discussion.

For decades, however, Klabin has measured no efforts to develop innovative technologies to break the plastic and mineral productive chains, heading towards sustainable paper-based materials. Ranging across three Brazilian states - São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina –, the company holds over 625 thousand hectares of forest, of which 42% are native reserves. Its most renowned protected territory, the Ecological Park of the Fazenda Monte Alegre in Telêmaco Borba has become an inestimable area of high conservation value due to its significant concentration of rare, threatened or endangered ecosystems.

Klabin's initiatives, perhaps at first counter-intuitively, have proven how technology can have significant impacts in nature’s conservation. It was by examining this positive relationship between Nature and Technology that our proposal was founded.

After the artist experienced the protected forest first hand and studied its impact on raising the biodiversity levels of the region, "Crown Shyness" became a way to promote sensitive connections with the forest. The installation's main materials, Klabin's Eukaliner craft paper, and metal were combined with custom-built technological instruments that gather satellite generated information on the winds of the protected forest to create a large-scale kinetic panel. The paper sculptures on it behave as the crowns of trees - breathing as living beings and barely touching each other at all.

The installation's main materials, Klabin's Eukaliner craft paper, and metal were combined with custom-built technological instruments that gather satellite generated information on the winds of the protected forest to create a large-scale kinetic panel. The software and motion, designed by Dimitre Lima, brought the paper sculptures to life. Each of them, parameterized digitally but folded manually, uniquely created by paper artist and specialist Gabriela Castro, behaved as the crowns of trees — breathing as living beings and barely touching each other at all.

Inaugurated at the INOVA Klabin event, hosted at the São Paulo Biennial Pavilion in São Paulo, the artwork was first assembled with the over 500 guests that were present in the event. In collaboration with Pavoni, the artist Isabella Nardini designed the experience at the event.

There, the participants were first divided into groups of three and given one of the paper sculptures that would later be a part of the final work. Distributed according to the abilities they most identified themselves with, the groups got familiarized with the theme of the work and were asked to connect with the materials, feeling their softness and malleability, understanding more how the paper behaves.

Then, they were instructed to pin the sculptures on the panel. In order to do that, however, the groups needed to learn from the trees, assuming their ability to work as one single individual.

Once all the paper sculptures were assembled, participants were invited to drink a tea especially designed by tea sommelier and blender Dani Lieuthier. Each person was given a card in which a question was posed on their relationship to the forest. The experience ended when all participants could see the completed work in motion.