“Suon Laulu (Song of the Swamp): Soil Data Sonification of Post-Human Landscapes” presented by Yoncha, Selin, Korpi, Givens, Tolvanen, et al. …

Symposium:

ISEA2024: 29th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Session Title:

Virtual (artist talks)

Presentation Title:

Suon Laulu (Song of the Swamp): Soil Data Sonification of Post-Human Landscapes

Presentation Subtheme:

Ecologies of place

Presenter(s):

Venue(s):

Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, Brisbane, Australia

Abstract:

Suon Laulu (Song of the Swamp) is a graphic score, choral performance, and programmed video visualizing and sonifying 160 years of soil data from post-extraction peatland landscapes. This research is part of Re:Peat, a multifaceted eco-art project. In 2019-2020, Anne Yoncha worked with scientists from Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luonnonvarakeskus, or Luke) to study restoration techniques for peatland extraction sites. Using a hyperspectral camera, she accessed data about soil health from soil core samples which we are unable to see with the naked eye.

The piece moves from past to present. Variations in water content, temperature, and level are mapped onto musical staves, the upper staff representing a restored study plot, and the lower, an unrestored plot. Composer Hannah Selin translated these into a choral composition for the Tuira Chamber Choir, inserting 50 human voices into the data translation process, evoking our enmeshment with soil and the non-human species living in it. Accompany-ing is a video programmed by Brian Givens with Processing visual coding language. In it, the false-color hyperspectral camera image is the hidden “seed image”, rear-ranging pixels in the visible image from the stereo micro-scope. The data both obscures and reveals information about our non-human, soil-dwelling neighbors.