Find Trees in Names: What if We are Trees?
Bairui Su / 2025-05-21
UIST Demo 2026, ITP Spring Show 2025, ITP Winter Show 2025
Find Trees in Names is a collective experience from ITP Spring Show 2025. Participants typed their name, watched a tree grow, added it to the forest, printed it out, and put it on the wall. The project includes Name2Tree, APack stamps, and follow-up visualizations: Tree Swarm, Harmony, and Mountains, Trees, Names. It explores digital identity and the nature of code through generative art and data visualization.
How It Works
Name2Tree converts a name into a unique, deterministic tree, then stamps it with APack. Any text works — names, poems, numbers. Here is a video demos and some outputs.
Conversion Process
ITP Spring Show 2025
Visitors used Name2Tree and APack together, then printed their tree and added it to the wall.
Visualizations
Follow-up views of the forest: Tree Grid, Tree Cloud, Tree Swarm, and Harmony.
Family Tree
Tree Swarm
Tree Grid
Tree Cloud
Tree HarmonyInfinite Landscape
All the trees planted in a procedurally generated landscape, Mountains, Trees, Names. For ITP Winter Show 2025, Chloe and I printed it with Riso.
{Mountains, Trees, Names}*
Landscape in ITP Winter Show 2025Iterations
Early versions of the tree, from a proof of concept to the final visual style.
Proof of Concept
Optimize Overlap
Add Mathematical Roses
Optimize Visual StyleFeedback
Instagram stories posted by participants.
