soil horizons
(2020- )
multi-channel sound installations / performances
derived from on-going research into vibrational resonances and life in soil systems.
interconnected structures, settling, salinity, cavitation, substrata burrows and paths
research trip - Portugal - April 2024
research trip / performance - Japan - October 2023
soil horizons - spit soil beds (installation) - Divfuse Art Space, London - April 2023
research trip - Cambridge Botanical Gardens - 2022
research trip / performance - Iceland - 2013
research trip / performance - Wired Lab, Australia - 2012
research recordings of root systems (grasses) in soil feature in the 'EarthSounds' series for Apple TV
alongside the listening research (soil horizons and ink botanic most recently) is something else;
to un-write
false borders
to write about not writing
to leave blank space, avoid translation of place
ownership through imposed language
a dissolution of non-human realms
intuitive equity
I can't remember the first time I listened to sounds in the soil. It would have been when I used minidiscs more regularly, though there is also a tape with some recordings that would have been earlier. Is it important when it was? I think about it only because the current interest in such sounds is both positive but also a history being re-written, names left out, context re-shaped. Systems of narrative, creaking.
I think, in the eighties or early nineties, I read about a Japanese artist associated with Gutai, placing a microphone in the ground, sometime in the 1970's. The piece was conceptual and I don't think anything was said about the sound. There was an image, with several members of the group pictured and it wasn't clear whether the piece was a collective one or that of a single member of the group.
I heard sounds stated as being recorded in the soil on records, though some were probably sound effects, foley. I read texts about sticks being used by indigenous communities, to listen for grubs, water courses and signs of drought. When I was visiting Australia I heard first hand the sound of large grubs along fence wires, and then hearing how this same method, with ears pressed to the fence posts, was used by communities there.
The small, cheap tie-clip microphones I used with my first mini-disc recorders, along with contact microphones and hydrophones, were wrapped and dug into flower beds, fields and compost heaps. Like my boxes of minidiscs waiting to be transferred, I think about all the stories, images and research notes that are sitting somewhere, perhaps uncatalogued, perhaps already assigned to the recycling, and how the names are often loose from the current narratives.
I want all of the history to be part of this shifting field of research, accessible and inclusive. It's long and goes way outside of the walls of scientific research.