When a tree falls in the forest.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is present to hear it, does it make a sound? This cliched question has been asked many times by philosophers and teachers to their students.

However it also reveals something critical about human experience, particularly how we experience and perceive events and happenings in the world.

The common-sense answer is, yes, of course, a falling tree makes a sound.

If you and I were walking in the forest at the time, we would clearly hear the cracking of the wood, the rustling of the leaves, and the thud as the tree slammed into the forest floor.

The scientific answer, however, is no.

A falling tree itself makes no sound. Its descent merely creates vibrations in the air and the ground.

These vibrations become sound only if something special is present to receive and translate them, say, an ear connected to a brain. Our outer ear gathers changes in air pressure and focuses them on the eardrum, producing vibrations in the middle ear. These vibrations move fluid in the inner ear over tiny hairs, which convert the pressure changes into electrical signals sent to the brain.

Without this special machinery, there is no sound, only air movement.

Even after the brain receives these electrical signals, its task is not complete. This wave must still be interpreted as the sound of a toppling tree.

For this, the brain needs the concept of a tree and what trees can do, such as falling in a forest.

This concept can come from prior experience with trees, from learning about trees in a book, or from another person’s description.

Without the “concept”, there is no crashing timber, only the meaningless noise of experiential blindness.

“A sound”, therefore, is not an event that is detected in the world. It is an experience “constructed” when the world interacts with a body that detects changes in air pressure and a brain that can make those changes meaningful.

Without a perceiver, there is no sound.

The concepts we choose to value and centralise inform our lived experience and what we consider meaningful and meaningless.

Through the arts, we generate our own vibrations, move the air around us, move the liquids inside us, and move our being as humans through material manipulation, making and doing. Over time our concepts of the world change. What we care to notice are influenced.

Through this, the trees of our forest become more alive. By connecting with our world through arts practice, we hear and notice when a tree falls in the forest simply because we care enough to notice in the first place. The arts foster attention to what makes our world special and we conceptually live through this abundant reality.