Unusual Christmas trees are becoming a tradition at the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies, challenging students and staff to start a new year full original solutions and freedom of thought.
Tumo’s first Christmas tree, back in 2011, was actually a dozen trees hanging upside down from the center’s industrial ceiling. This inverted and multiplied tree watched over Tumo’s thousands of new students circulating under it from workstations to workshops and celebrating the new year.
The following year, the Tumo Christmas tree was composed of thin scraps of wood veneer curling along a large wall at the center’s entrance in an abstract tree-like shape. Students deposited their wishes, tucked into red envelopes in the hundreds of curved nooks of the tree.
Wishes deposited in the nooks of Tumo’s abstract Christmas tree
Last year’s tree was also made of wood and hung form the Tumo ceiling, but this one was made up of 5,000 pencils covering the center’s installation area. Hovering at precise points in space along a digitally designed three-dimensional surface, they depicted a pine tree in a snowy landscape. They symbolized a stance against deforestation, returning to the tree wooden pencils that were then used by students to draw flipbooks and sketch designs throughout the following year.
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A pine tree in a snowy landscape made up of 5,000 pencils
That was also the year when the Tumo plaza in Tumanyan Park saw its first Christmas tree. Made up of abandoned computer displays, this outdoor tree also celebrated the spirit of recycling and reuse. It was inspired by Tumo’s Retrotech workshop in which students repurposed components from obsolete computers to make interactive electronic gadgets and art.
A ‘retrotech’ tree in the Tumo Plaza created with repurposed monitors
The appearance of this year’s Tumo Christmas tree coincided with the exhibition of student photographs celebrating Armenia’s modern architecture from the Soviet era. It is a tree in the form of a magically revived carcass of a Volga car, an iconic example of Soviet design, affirming the freedom of thought and interpretation that Tumo students enjoy all year round.
A resurrected Volga is this year’s Christmas tree at Tumo
The new outdoor tree also continues the tradition of recycling and reuse, being made up of snow sleds assembled into the traditional cone shape and lit from within.
A pile of sleds in a festive mood make up Tumo’s outdoor Christmas tree
And Christmas trees are now featured in a big way in Tumo’s New Year greeting card, a digital “wishing forest’’ on the web where each visitor can plant a tree and add a wish to it. All those trees full of wishes will start to grow, reaching their full size and potential throughout the course of 2015, which promises to be filled with unexpected solutions.
Tumo’s press release