Moss has gained a reputation as one of the best natural art mediums, a living swath of vivid green with an irresistible texture that can be coaxed into various shapes and patterns. While most moss art involves either gluing sheets of preserved moss to a surface or painting on a mixture of live moss that will adhere to the surface and grow, this method – illustrated here by Stefaan de Croock – takes the opposite approach.

Rather than adding something – like spray paint –  to a surface in order to create a design, subtractive graffiti strips something away. That ‘something’ might be dirt on a sidewalk, or soot on a wall. In this case, it’s moss.

Using a pressure washer, de Croock (a.k.a. Strook) carefully removed moss growing on a wall in Leuven, Belgium. As the moss was stripped away, urban scenes full of giant robots were revealed. The mural was created outside the STUK art center, and likely grew back over within a few weeks.

The figures seem to float on air, hanging in unnatural positions, their limbs dangling. Made of a compacted growing medium, these sculptures by Mathilde Roussel are planted with grass seeds and allowed to transform over time, the grass sprouting and growing.

The French artist’s ‘Lifes of Grass’ series is pictured here at the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, Tennessee. The sculptures are formed using a metal frame, soil and wheat grass.

The artist explains that she aims to show viewers, through the sculptures, that the food we eat and the way that it is grown and transported has an impact on us all. “The natural world, ingested as food becomes a component of human being. Through these anthropomorphic and organic sculptures made of soil and wheat grass seeds, I strive to show that food, its origin, its transport, has an impact on us beyond its taste.”

“The power inside it affects every organ of our body. Observing nature and being aware of what and how we eat makes us more sensitive to food cycles in the world – of abundance, of famine – and allows us to be physically, intellectually and spiritually connected to a global reality.”

It flows down the streets, up staircases and around corners – a green carpet, unfurled like a leaf, in a city of stone. This path of grass was installed in the picturesque French village of Jaujac to celebrate the 10th year of its arts and nature trail programs. Public artists Gaëlle Villedary used an incredible 3.5 tons of natural, living turf grass.

Stretching nearly 1,400 feet, the trail brings greenery to places that have little room for nature. Though the village is set in a breathtaking natural setting of forests, hills and rivers, its public areas are fairly bare.

The artists explain, “Through the village to link natural areas on either side, a link, a path … a path connecting the heart of the village and its inhabitants with the valley. The incarnation of the wire through the ages to Jaujac is a piece of nature, a communion between Nature and Man, through Art.”

Calling to mind moss graffiti, the green carpet represents a stunning convergence of natural and urban environments. The temporary installation was completed in September 2011.

If trees could play music, what would it sound like? That may seem like a silly question, but artist Bartholomäus Traubeck has found a way to answer it. The appropriately titled ‘Years’ project translates the rings of tree slices into piano music using a vintage turntable, a Playstation Eye Camera and a computer running the software ‘Ableton Live‘.

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

The effect, as you can hear in the video above, is surprisingly somber and haunting. The German-born artist, who divides his time between Rotterdam, Netherlands and Linz, Austria, explains that the music software reads the rings as they shift and change and translates that raw sound into a pre-selected musical sound – in this case, piano.

“A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.”

Glistening like the scales of a terrifyingly enormous sea creature, the bizarre landscape covering the floor of the Centquatre art space in Paris is delightfully surreal. WasteLandscape is an art installation in a former funeral home, made of 65,000 discarded CDs.

Architect Clémence Eliard and artist Elise Morin collected the CDs and connected them into a reflective blanket using wire. Inflatable mounds provide the strange, evocative hills of the landscape.

The installation will remain at Centquatre until September 10th, when it will begin a tour of other locations. The CDs will eventually be recycled. Say the artists, “WasteLandscape will be displayed in locations coherent with the stakes of the project: art role in society, raising consciousness to environmental problems through culture, alternative mode of production and valuation of district associative work and professional rehabilitation.”

“It is well known that CDs are condemned to gradually disappear from our daily life, and to later participate in the construction of immense open-air, floating or buried toxic waste reception centers. Made of petroleum, this reflecting slick of CDs forms a still sea of metallic dunes: the art work’s monumental scale reveals the precious aspect of a small daily object. The project joins a global, innovative and committed approach, from its means of production until the end of its ‘life’.”