Living trees were used. I was thinking of realism or perhaps hyperrealism art.
Anyway, I misunderstood what the artist was trying to accomplish.
I think you have it now, Ace.
The Art made you think, that’s the highest praise you can bestow on an Artist.
If only there was a way to easily determine his intent prior to making the post.
I grew up next to national forest and hike semi-regularly.
The trees look reasonably spaced to me, but I’ve seen ones further apart and closer together; it depends on the type of tree. Whether the artist got it right for these particular types of tree, I could not say, but the overhead shot of how close the furthest leaves are from one tree to the furthest leaves of the next tree seems good to me in terms of access to light.
My guess would be that you simply live in an area with tree types that need more room.
While it’s true that the ‘forest’ there is unnatural looking, you’re wrong about this:
The trees in the forest behind my house (that’s considerably older than me, and I’m more than a half-century old) are much closer together than the (obviously) artificial ‘forest’ in those pictures, and my (actually my neighbor owns it, but I walk in it) forest is quite healthy, thank-you-very-much. The trees in the (totally natural, and unmodified by humans for over 200 years) state forest 30 miles away from me that I go to occasionally are about the same distance apart as the ones in those pictures (much closer in some spots). That forest, too, is quite healthy. The brush, vines, and stuff at ground level of both are much thicker than that. You need a machete to get through it in some places. No fire hazard. There hasn’t been a forest fire in this region in anyone’s living memory.
You appear to be assuming that what you are personally familiar with is typical of everywhere, which is always a very bad assumption to make.
Am I the only one who clicked the first link in the OP, and then wondered what the heck art aceplace57 was talking about?
^ You are not the only one, but I had thumbs to twiddle. 
This is also true of the Korean DMZ.
This thread is the first time I’ve ever encountered someone *literally *not seeing the forest for the trees.
The bottom of Pyrenaic north sides is like that. The species in the exhibit are more mixed than in the northern slopes of the Pyrenees, but aside from that it looks like pictures I could take anywhere in that zone where I can see a northern side clearly.
A lot of the Pyrenees have a shape similar to Arthur’s Seat or to the hill atop which Edinburgh Castle sits; please check the second view. The long, soft, walkable slope is the south, whereas the north side is a sharp cliff. The area below the cliff will be covered in grass and trees, and have similar species as a south-side climb at similar heights but occupying bands which are much narrower in terms of actual physical space. Take a pic of a southern slope, you’ll be lucky to see more than one species of trees; take one of a northern slope’s bottom and you easily have four different-colored bands.
What makes it look unnatural to me isn’t how close the trees are- there’s plenty of woodland near here with trees closer together than that- it’s that they’re too evenly spaced. There’s also no dead bits, shorter spindly trees that are being outcompeted or bare lower branches on the central trees, which natural dense woodland should have.
Eye catching project though, but I’m sure glad it’s not my job to restore the grass on the pitch to playable condition afterwards.
I’ve encountered real world examples of this. Back during the depression, the CCC paid people to plant saplings. And they generally planted them in a grid. I once walked through one of these forests, decades later when the trees were grown. It generally looked like a normal natural forest. But if you stood in certain spots, you’d realize the trees lined up.
Israel is full of forests like that. When you want to turn the desert green, you set about doing it systematically.
“Hello, park rangers? I’d like to report a serious burn.”
Lots of areas with absurdly orderly trees in Spain too (mostly repopulation after fires) and Sweden (where I understand it’s wood farms). I remember my father making us check out how the trees were all lined up and explaining that this was a repopulated area, telling us about forest fires, etc. I’ve seen other parents do the same with their own children.
HIS forest hurts your eyes?
Well, YOUR “forrest” hurts MINE!
Yes, and that **Picasso guy should learn the people’s faces aren’t made up of cubes.
It’s an art installation, people. It is not a nature preserve. It is not intended to be representational, but rather is designed to get people to look at the forest (and a football stadium) in a new way. It is designed to make people think and talk about the issues of nature vs. human influence.
,.,
In that way, this thread shows it’s hugely successful.
You’re not the only one. That’s what I did.