The album, Tree Talks: Populus Tremuloides, is the culmination of a year-long series of gatherings in Kenosha Pass, Colorado focused on understanding a single tree through a multitude of perspectives. Once per season, from October 2021–August 2022, the public was invited to a grove of Populus tremuloides, quaking aspen, to hear lectures by experts from diverse fields—ranging from ecologists to poets—who each shared their knowledge of the tree. For more information on each conversation, please refer to their respective Tree Talks program page: Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer.

The sounds of these gatherings were recorded using a variety of microphones to capture human voices, scientific information, poetic and metaphysical ideas, and the sounds of the aspen and other flora and fauna of the landscape. Kinsley’s resulting 36-minute album (and accompanying material) is an attempt to encapsulate a multivocal story about a quaking aspen grove located at 9,997' elevation on Kenosha Pass, Colorado, USA, Planet Earth, Solar System, Oort Cloud, Local Interstellar Cloud, Local Cavity, Orion Arm, Milky Way, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster, Laniakea Supercluster, the Universe.

Copies of this limited-edition of 50 album will be available for purchase in-person at the release party, and via our online shop following the release.

Artist Bio
Ben Kinsley’s projects have ranged from choreographing a neighborhood intervention into Google Street View, directing surprise theatrical performances inside the homes of strangers, organizing a paranormal concert series, staging a royal protest, investigating feline utopia, collecting put-down jokes from around the world, and planting a buried treasure in the streets of Mexico City (yet to be found).

He has exhibited internationally at venues such as: Queens Museum, NYC; Cleveland Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland; Bureau for Open Culture; Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, and many more. Ben has been an artist-in-residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; Skaftfell Art Center, Iceland; Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Ireland; and Platform, Finland. His work has been featured on NPR, Associated Press, The Washington Post, Artforum.com, Wired.com, Rhizome.org, and Hyperallergic, among others.

Kinsley is an Assistant Professor and Co-Director of Visual Art in the Department of Visual & Performing Arts at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He is Co-Founder of The Yard and former President of the Pikes Peak Mycological Society.