Using the burial of microbial-enhancing treated and untreated cotton fabric samples, I spent two months listening to and recording the sounds of tenosol and rudosol soils on the unfarmed lands of my peri-urban property outside the city of Dubbo. The #SoundOfSoils project timeframe included a dry El Niño 2023 spring, and a two-week heatwave in early summer that sent soil temperatures above 30°C, followed by rain, cooler weather, and the regeneration of perennial native plants at two burial sites. Using specialist microphones, audio recordings captures the initial silence of hot soils at burial through to an increasing range of clicks, rasps, crackles, munches and rustling as the subterranean world comes back to life, demonstrating how soil fauna-reliant ecosystems may adapt to extreme conditions.
The #SoundOfSoils project puts an ear on the unremarkable tenuous or rudimentary soils of Central West New South Wales, Australia, capturing an intimate, reciprocal conversation between me and these ‘good-for-nothing’ soils. Tenosol and rudosol soils have little organic matter, poor water retention, and are mostly considered unproductive. However, these ancient soils have supported an ecosystem of native Australian flora and fauna—including soil fauna, for hundreds of thousands of years. In the age of the Anthropocene, the value of these soils is based on their use to humans. Seventy per cent of soils in Australia are considered unproductive because they are arid or semi-arid. The #SoundOfSoils celebrates these ancient earthy sands for what they are, and their value to more-than-human life.
ARTWORKS
Along with the presentation of a co-authored abstract with US artist/academic, Anne Yoncha, titled Sound of Soils: Two approaches to a multisensory understanding of soil, at the Centennial Celebration and Congress of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS), 19-21 May 2024, Florence, Italy, an 8-minute soundscape composition, 650-word poetic prose and 4-minute animated video was presented in an 8pp chapbook format in a pop-up exhibition Installation at Il Conventino fuori le Mura following the congress. This project was initiated by the ecoartspace Soil Dialogues. #SOUNDOFSOILS creative works
Cracked open with a crowbar, soil runs like silk through fingers — from rose pinks and greys to darker clumps of clay. Warm, acid, floury—tenuous and rudimentary soils devoid of visible life. Silence holds the space of expectation. Pink galahs shriek from cypress pines at the thought this dirt holds anything of worth.
From ‘Good-for-nothing Dirt’, 2024, chapbook
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