Sensing Soil

<p dir="ltr">Background: Almost all terrestrial life on Earth depends on soil – from microorganism through to plants and animals yet, as Tim Ingold has noted, modern cities, insulate people from sensing soil (2004). This pilot project aimed to use diverse forms of creative practice to render soil’s aliveness tangible: to ask how can creative practitioners render soil health visible? According to Siân Ede ‘[a]rtists don’t ‘do’ prettification, product or propaganda for the public understanding of science. But they can engage with it and create [works] which suggest alternative ways of seeing’ (2005 p.3). Utilising acoustic emissions, creative writing, image-based datasets, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the highly trained olfactory senses of a sommelier this pilot project investigated how creative practice can bring soil’s essential vitality to our collective consciousness. </p><p dir="ltr">Contribution: Video imagery generated using AI and based on datasets of Victorian soil maps was presented as an ever-changing ‘colourscape’, with an audio track crafted from geophone and vibrational recordings to help to render soil ‘audible’. This was accompanied by a printed pamphlet designed by Public Office. On one side of the pamphlet a short story wove together memory and the experience of Melbourne during the COVID-19 lockdowns to imagine a different type of city that embraces its wetlands, soil and natural ecosystems. Also contained in the pamphlet was a series of soil ‘tasting’ notes. Written by a sommelier these notes rendered samples of soil from across Melbourne sensorially visible. </p><p dir="ltr">Significance: Sensing Soil was funded by RMIT’s CCR-NET Sensing Climate Change fund which is supported by the Urban Futures and Design and Social Practice EIP. It was exhibited at RMITs Design Hub as part of Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons. The pamphlet was also exhibited online as part of Mapping Future Imaginaries.</p>