CIISA- SOIL INITIAL IDEA

My passion for soil started with my love of the trees. Soil being such an integral and intimate part of our lives seemed like the next set for my practice. Since my new found admiration and exploration into soil it has unravel so many questions. What’s our connection to soil? how do we treat our soil? What dose soil sound like? Dose happier soil produce healthy produce? Dose happier soil heal and make us healthier people? In this unit I really want to dig below the topsoil of what soil dose for us and have a deeper understand of the biological and scientific side of this unfamiliar world.

I want to attempt to understand every aspect of soil. In this project I will lean into the sound of soil quality through researching the different ways soil is treated in organic, regenerative, biodynamic farming methods and to juxtapose I also wanted to brush upon commercial agricultural farming and areas of land that have been treated with harmful chemicals to see the disparity of these methods.

My initial idea is to go to an organic framing site, commercial agricultural site and an average London park to see the differences in soil quality. I would approach these sites sonically with a geofon and other subterranean mics in order to hear the soil itself. Through much research I have learn’t that happier soil is a noisier soil. I am exited to discover what soil sounds like, and to see how different framing methods effect the way the soil sounds.

The only issue that might arise fro this project is that most farmers might not always willing for people to come in and listen to their soil! So my first obstacle is the find the sites themselves and see if the framers are willing to co operate. If I find that no one will allow me to do this I don’t necessarily want to illegal cross private land to take these recordings although I have opinions about private land and its regulations, I want this to be a proper on the books scientific discovery for myself and others. So, my next option is to allow myself to explore everything I have previously stated that I will look into but go off of a simpler base. The other idea is to go to 3 or more separate locations and take recordings there instead. These locations I am consider to be are; an untouched ancient deer park in Kent that I focus on a lot in my work, deep in the Dorset countryside where I grew up on and old farm which haas been out of use for around 50 years, and finally a local London park. These three locations would give me a broad idea of the sounds of many different soils which overtime have been used for different purposes.

My initial idea for the presentation for this work was to create a piece for n exhibition. I would have 3 boxes, each filled with soil from the areas I had recorded in. Upon further refection I sealed how distractive and unethical of myself that would have been, as I don’t want to disturb any ecosystems. I also realised that what you hear when you put a geofon to the ground is the activity of the insects such as worms etc and taking these creatures out of their natural habitat definitely dose not agree with my ethics. So it is something to consider through this project of how I want to present the recordings, something which I think will become very apparent once I start the process. Most likely I would want to either submit the recordings to an environmental acoustic library to provide information that is accessible to others or I would release it myself on a platform enabling me to share my discoveries with others about how sonically interacting soil can be.