Ground-breaking:
Past Lives in Grains and Pixels
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Ground-breaking explores cultural imprints
left by societal responses to change: in this study, the 10,000
year history of the Lake Chad region.
Soils
are an essential source of, and sink for, materials used to
sustain basic human existence by providing nutrients for plant
growth and receiving material inputs as wastes or fertilizers.
Soils subjected to such inputs may retain the imprint of thes
e activities. This imprint, commonly microscopic, can show how
societies managed their surrounding landscapes. Soils can act
as a record of past cultural activities; the examination of
such cultural soils forms the major element of Ground-breaking.
Data obtained from the soil imaging is used
as a source for generative audio and visual exploration: photomicrographs
(and related contextual images) are processed and animated,
and environmental sound recordings, in conjunction synthesized
materials, are subject to real-time granular processing and
dynamic filtering.
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This project was created
with support of the Research Councils UK, for National and Science
and Engineering Week 2007. It has been shown at the National
Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, The Shunt Vaults, London Bridge;
Event 3 Festival (Mutamorphosis:
Challenging the Arts and Sciences) Prague 2007.
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By examining a context with a long-term
cultural history, a narrative develops. Data from scientific
analysis provide functions to the narrative, in that they
are indices to both landscape and human conditions. These
data may connote actions either anthropogenic or environmental.
The narrative emerges from the exploration of data, in
which a sequence of actions is deduced from functional
descriptions of physical objects, that are in turn offered
for evaluation and exploration in sonic and visual forms. |
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mp4
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