‘One Tree, One Planet’ event series promotes biodiversity

An idea thought up more than a year ago in Campeche, Mexico, will come to life in just a few weeks.

Douglas Soltis, a distinguished professor in the Florida Museum of Natural History, was in Mexico with his wife, Pam, when they saw a projection of the story of the Mayan people on a building. The image inspired them to use the same medium to discuss biodiversity.

“One Tree, One Planet,” a free event series to take place during the week of Nov. 13, will promote the importance of a biodiverse planet through an animated movie, a projection by a world-famous artist and a special-edition beer launch.

“What we’re really trying to do is promote to the public the importance of biodiversity and how critical it is to have a biodiverse world for your future, for all of our futures, and we’re doing that through a series of events that are linked to the tree of life,” Soltis said.

The events are being supported by grants and funding from the Florida Museum, the UF Genetics Institute, the Office of the Provost and the College of the Arts.

Soltis said the events will use the tree of life, which represents the connectivity of all the species on the planet, as a metaphor for biodiversity.

“I think what we want to do with these events is grab people by the heart,” he said.

The two main events, an animated film, “TreeTender,” and an outdoor projection of the tree of life, will premiere Nov. 16 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Florida Museum, located at 3215 Hull Road.

“TreeTender” is an animated film designed for the event by artists at the UF Digital Worlds Institute, wrote James Oliverio, a UF professor and the founding director of the Digital Worlds Institute, in an email.

Naziha Mestaoui, a Paris-based artist, created the interactive tree of life image that will be projected on the back of the Harn Museum of Art.

“The artwork is actually a journey that brings the audience in connection with all different species,” Mestaoui said. “It’s all the story of connectivity between living organisms and understanding that we all share common genomes.”

The audience will be able to interact with the “One Tree, One Planet” projection at iPad stations where they can see their heartbeats next to those of other species, she said.

The projection is paired with a symphony performance composed by Mestaoui, which was created by digitizing and assigning a musical note to DNA.

“The idea is to understand that there is a unity and a harmony and something that connects us all,” she said.

As part of the event series, First Magnitude Brewing Company, located at 1220 SE Veitch St., will be launching a special-edition pale ale, called One Tree, on Nov. 17 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The beer will represent 11 branches of the tree of life through its ingredients: sweet orange, Spanish cedar, barley, rye, wheat, oats, gallberry, yeast, hops, honey and Irish moss.

Simon McClung, the marketing coordinator for First Magnitude, said the brewery works to support conservation.

The event series will be the first attempt at a mass project they hope to take worldwide, Soltis said.

“What inspired us is the incredible need to get people, especially the public, involved in the importance of biodiversity on our planet,” Soltis said. “We want people to see this at a lot of different places.”