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.
