Trish Morgan – Sensing Our World

Rare Earthenware

Title: Rare Earthenware
Artists: Unknown Field Division in collaboration with FIX
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): visual
Issue(s): toxic e-waste, metals, pollution

The Unknown Fields Division is a ‘nomadic design research studio that ventures out on expeditions to the ends of the earth to bear witness to alternative worlds, alien landscapes, industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness’.¹ Therefore, it is concerned with the various problematic interactions between nature and society. A particular project from the studio, Rare Earthenware was foregrounded in Neural in 2016. This project concerned visibilising the e-waste in the form of toxic metal, integral to the production of digital technologies such as smartphones and laptops.

In the Rare Earthenware project, documentation from areas of rare earth metal production were combined with ceramics production to create a visual and material representation of the toxicity of production of digital devices. The project traced the global supply chain of rare earth metals to ‘their source at a toxic lake in Inner Mongolia’.² Mud was taken from this lake and vases were created from the mud, in collaboration with ceramicist Kevin Callaghan. The vases were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2014, and an accompanying video was also produced.

GhostFood

Title: GhostFood
Artist(s): Miriam Simun and Miriam Songster
Source: Neural Magazine
Sense(s): Taste
Issue(s): Food loss due to climate change

This piece explores the loss of biodiversity due to climate change, but in the form of smell and taste of foods threatened by climate change. The artists therefore created a performance piece, whereby they installed their work in a food truck that ‘served’ taste experiences of flavours that may be threatened by climate change, such as cod, peanuts and cocoa. The users ordered from a menu of food they would like to taste. However, what is presented to the client is not the food itself, but a device that directly stimulates the olfactory (taste) sense, giving the impression of experiencing the food. The device is worn on the face, and directs smells into the nose. This olfactory experience is supplemented by a ‘climate resilient textural substitute that will mimic the texture’ of the soon to be unavailable food.¹ It is known that the sense of smell influences how food is tasted. Therefore, by designing these devices as a thought experiment, the authors are making ‘smelly’ and ‘tasty’ the effects of climate change, while asking the audience to consider their visceral response to these substitute materials.

What is unusual about this project is that it invokes ‘olfactory memory’ ² to evoke visceral responses to climate change. This also evokes a sense of attachment to food, and the relative disgust at eating synthetic substitutes of food that no longer exists. Thus, the project reveals that not only can environmental issues be visibilised and sonified, but made olfactory also.

Where are the wild ones?

Title: Where are the wild ones?
Artist(s): Kaffe Matthews
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Audio, visual
Issue(s): Environmental health of water

This project is a place-based study of the river Tyne, charting through sound and visuals the journey of the Atlantic salmon, and revealing material from the source, long the length of the Tyne, to its mouth. The work is presented as sound and video, and ‘will weave myth with scientific data to make new music’.¹ The installation therefore mixes originally composed music, with sonic data from the river, along with Environment Agency of the UK data on pH levels, temperature, flow rates, oxygen and ammonia levels in the Tyne. These multiple data points ‘were used to define melody structure and rhythmic quality’.² Along with these environmental data points, Matthews also included data on fish populations and mortality (ibid.).

This project aims to engage ‘audiences of all ages’ (KM site), in a place-based environmental narrative of the river Tyne. Its contributions therefore are in how it engages local communities on matters connected to an aspect of their local environment.

Trees: Rendering Ecophysiological Processes Audible

Title: Trees: Rendering Ecophysiological Processes Audible
Artist(s): Marcus Maeder
Source: NEURAL
Sense(s): Sound, Installation
Issue(s): Environmental impact of climate change

This research project by Marcus Maeder seeks to render audible certain processes of trees and forests. Maeder recorded various sounds of trees using scientific measurement tools (Neural). He then presented the work in spatial audio installations, where the speakers playing the sounds are ‘suspended in the shape of a cube formed by 9 columns of 4 speakers each. Using virtual imaging techniques field recordings of climate conditions are projected outside of the boundaries of the installation, while recordings of the acoustic emissions of trees are reproduced within the installation on individual speaker columns’ (Neural). In addition, the environment in which the installation is playing, is fed by environmental data from the trees/forest, such as temperature affecting the loudness of the installation.

Thus, the installation provides a complex sonic landscape from both outside and within the forest installation. However, in creating a feedback loop from within the forest installation that affects the sounds itself, it echoes the feedback loops created by society upon nature. It is therefore relevant for this project. Indeed, ‘the combination of both recognizable and previously unheard sounds create a sonic representation of natural processes, attempting to convey the complexity of specific ecological systems through correlations between processed environmental data and recordings of acoustic phenomena’ (Neural).

In the Eyes of the Animal

Title: In the Eyes of the Animal
Artist(s): Marshmallow Laser Feast Collective
Source: Creative Applications
Sense(s): visual
Issue(s): biodiversity, ecosystem visualisation

This project is a 360º video and Virtual Reality installation in Grizedale forest in the UK. For this installation, specially constructed VR headsets were created and installed within the forest. When a viewer puts on the headset, they are taken on a VR journey, where they visualise the forest as different animal species. The installation includes recorded field sounds and a virtual mapping of the area using LIDAR.

This piece is important because, as humans, we see forests and nature in particular ways. However, this installation allows us to view the forest from the perspective of a different species, such as dragonfly. In this way, it is an attempt to transcend the anthropocentric assumptions of our relationship with nature, and to imaginatively visibilise how ecosystems can be viewed from different species’ vantages. For the project creators ‘the ultimate goal is to create an understanding of how these animals process optical information and so give people a chance to reflect on their own visual perceptions of the forest’.¹

eLEmeNT: EaRTh

Title: eLEmeNT: EaRTh
Artist(s): Nandita Kumar
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound, vision, touch – multisensory
Issue(s): Nature/society relationship, human impact on ecosystems

Element Earth is an elegant and delicate mixed media installation that is inspired by the principle of biomimicry
¹, that is ‘a design discipline that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf. The core idea is that Nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with: energy, food production, climate control, non-toxic chemistry, transportation, packaging, and a whole lot more’.² This project therefore functions as a model of a living ecosystem, made with wood, printed circuit boards, sensors and various other elements associated with digital and/or electronic arts. The model is placed in a glass jar, providing the compelling visual of a ‘natural’ ecosystem made up of electronic components.

However, this work is not just a representational model – it in itself is ‘living’. For example, a tree within the model is made of solar cells which charges the circuit boards within the model. When charged, these electronic circuits make nature-based sounds such as those of the ‘big bang, the sound of earth from a distance through radio waves, whales mating, rain, wind, birds, etc’.
³ Furthermore, the human impact on this model environment is evidenced by a sensor attached to the glass jar itself. When the jar is touched ‘it makes high pitched electronic sounds which indicates our carbon imprinting on the diorama of Earth’ (ibid.).

Therefore, this project is a multi-sensory and interactive piece which not only visibilises the nature/society relationship, but in allowing for dramatic responses to the interaction with the jar, it materialises the human impact on an ecosystem in a bold symbolic audio gesture.

Human Sensor

Title: Human Sensor
Artist(s): Kasia Molglas
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Visual
Issue(s): Air pollution

This performance piece visibilises urban air pollution through a combination of a dance performance and wearable environmental sensors. The environmental sensors monitor air pollution, and the wearable costumes involve a mask that both monitors the air quality of the artist wearing the costume, and allows the costume to visually respond to the wearer’s respiration. It therefore revealed to urban audiences the visibility of environmental air pollution, while involving the performers in themselves being affected by the pollution. In this way, the project held a sense of complicity – at once the audience were given an aestheticisation of air pollution, yet in visibilising the pollution data, the audience was also aware that the performers were in real-time being subjected to that pollution. In this way, the Human Sensor work is a very visceral way of communicating a key environmental issue in contemporary urban contexts.

Cocíclo

Title: Cocíclo
Artist(s): Alexandre Castonguay
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): Carbon monoxide pollution

Cocíclo is a device that measures carbon monoxide concentrations in urban environments. This device consists of various entities, such as a wearable that geolocates the user wearing the device, while also alerting the user with sound beeps depending on concentrations of CO. Additionally there is a ‘Cocíclo marker’ which is a ‘chalk-marking tool that inscribes the CO variations directly on the sidewalks or streets of the city’.¹ What is a key point for this project is in the observation that ‘The traditional visualization tools are not adequate for citizen involvement: We often witness data heatmaps of pollutants within our cities but they feel distant since they are not related to our actual experiences. Being situated at street level and witnessing the rapid evolution of pollutants because of our proximity to the sources of pollution, the data becomes more accurate (carbon monoxide dissipates rapidly from the emitting source), the experience is embodied and not abstracted’.² The chalk itself is impermanent, and thus serves as a suitable material for inscribing the data on streets, without the permanency of other materials. Thus, it both visibilises environmental data, and does so in a way that allows for changing levels of CO concentrations across time.

Pikslo deep diving

strong>Title: Pikslo deep diving
Artist(s): Robertina Šebjanič
Source: TBC
Sense(s): Sound
Issue(s): Underwater noise pollution

This project consists of field recordings and workshops to investigate the role of underwater noise pollution. The project acknowledges underwater noise pollution caused by human activity, and asks us to reflect on the sonic impacts of human activity on marine life.