When Earth Speaks
When Earth Speaks culminated in a body of works, including a stage performance, When Earth Speaks: A Dirty Ensemble which premiered in the Theatr yr Werin, Aberystwyth Arts Centre in June, 2024. It also included a series of expanded drawings Dirty Drawings, Dirty Bits, Dirty Pricks, Dirty Dots, A Dirty Animation, and an audio commission Dirty Composition in Three Parts by French pianist Sophie Agnel.
The focus of the project is on an area of land known as the Ffridd (the upland fringe), 600m approx. above sea level in the Elenydd plateau – the Cambrian Mountains, Mid Wales, and more specifically the soil beneath the land. The project utilises unprocessed (raw) scientific data generated by a high- resolution soil sensor network installed on the Ffridd as material to create durational drawings, sound compositions, music, dance, performance and film.
When Earth Speaks is a non-representational interpretation of the Welsh upland landscape, a creative intervention to an environmental scientific study, and a series of intersemiotic translations – between numerical code and non- verbal language, visual art, music, and dance. The project offers a timely critique on how we understand and manage the complex interrelationship between nature, scientific data and humans, and how each element of this triad influences and is being influenced by the other. It prompts reflection on the often reductive and homogenising narratives inherent to scientific data collection, analysis, and representation, and how it is often shaped by power, biases, and inequalities. It highlights the imbalance between an increasing appetite and excessive generation of scientific data – (and its carbon and resource costly management) and an alarmingly slower appetite for policy and behavioural change, and most importantly the project invites us to pay attention and listen to what the earth is saying.
Elements of the When Earth Speaks project are currently showing in the groundbreaking exhibition Soil: The World at Our Feet at Somerset House, London from January 23rd to April 13th 2025. The exhibition features over 50 international artists curated by The Land Gardiners Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy, independent curator May Rosenthal Sloane and Senior Curator at Somerset House Claire Caterall.
A documentary film featuring five artists included in the exhibition by Radford Nicholls director and Wes Gilpin Somerset House Digital Content Producer can be viewed above.
The Exhibition
The Performance
The film
The Audio
The Ensemble
The Writing
The Science
The Data
The Sensor Network
Soil Voices
Soil Voices
The Drawings
Dirty Drawings
Dirty Pricks
Dirty Animation
Dirty Compositions
Dirty Bits
Dirty Dots
The Research and Development
The drawing performance experiments
The collaborative performance experiments
The project was conceived through a NERC funded cross-disciplinary research project: Making the invisible visible: Instrumenting and interpreting an upland landscape for climate change resilience led by Prof Mariecia Fraser from IBERS, Aberystwyth University, and developed through a subsequent NERC funded cross disciplinary research project: Multispecies Politics in Action led by Prof Milja Kurki, Interpol, Aberystwyth University. When Earth Speaks: A Dirty Ensemble was funded by LADA, Live Arts Development Agency and Aberystwyth Arts Centre.