Digital Inquiry
Soil Study (2024) is an ongoing series of discursive experiments, processes, interventions and conversations with the memory of soil. I have been deeply engaged in these explorations over the past fifteen months, working through an array of artistic mediums including sculpture, photography, screen printing, movement, choreography and, most recently, digital GIFs and ASCII art. This body of work weaves together my personal memories – etched into my own body – with the historical and biological narratives inscribed in the chemistry of soil bodies. These memories, embedded in both human and ecological archives, collide, converge, mourn and celebrate in unison.
In the transformation of photographs and documentation of Soil Study into ASCII art – a form of computer-generated text art that creates images through arrangements of a!p#@numeri© characters – the work probes new questions. Do digital renderings hold tactile and visceral resonance? Are the layered memories, moments and stories we share with soil perceivable through the pixelated abstraction of our screens?
Through these translations, Soil Study continues to be an offering to reflect on the intricate and embodied ecological knowledge carried within soil body and the human body. In its digital form, the work invites viewers to contemplate whether the evocative and sensory essence of soil’s memory can transcend mediums, sparking recognition of our deep and intrinsic connection to the earth.
In the transformation of photographs and documentation of Soil Study into ASCII art – a form of computer-generated text art that creates images through arrangements of a!p#@numeri© characters – the work probes new questions. Do digital renderings hold tactile and visceral resonance? Are the layered memories, moments and stories we share with soil perceivable through the pixelated abstraction of our screens?
Through these translations, Soil Study continues to be an offering to reflect on the intricate and embodied ecological knowledge carried within soil body and the human body. In its digital form, the work invites viewers to contemplate whether the evocative and sensory essence of soil’s memory can transcend mediums, sparking recognition of our deep and intrinsic connection to the earth.
An ancient archive,
soil cradles the circles of life and decay. Its geological record serves as an indelible testament to
deep time—
These layers capture a haunting presence, recalling Lynn Margulis' Gaia theory of Earth’s interconnected, self-regulating systems. In soil ecological time flows through basins and veins of the earth, like movements traced in slow unrelenting pressure carving with a hum that drags transgressions of moments – life writhing within.
This notion of soil as a haunting site of remembrance conjures a sense of hauntology: a remembrance of beings and events across past, present, and future.
deep time—
a foundational baseline that ‘just is’, stretching into the depths of strata and sediment.
These layers capture a haunting presence, recalling Lynn Margulis' Gaia theory of Earth’s interconnected, self-regulating systems. In soil ecological time flows through basins and veins of the earth, like movements traced in slow unrelenting pressure carving with a hum that drags transgressions of moments – life writhing within.
This notion of soil as a haunting site of remembrance conjures a sense of hauntology: a remembrance of beings and events across past, present, and future.
Here, the ghosts of life linger in the spaces between grains in the quiet pockets of air, whispering the stories of life and decay. This interplay within the soil – the caretaker, the mother – creates a being that holds the weight of history, each molecule bearing the impressions of
countless cold kisses and enduring life.
When memory – ecological, bodily or cultural – is digitized into forms like ASCII art or digital archives, it must contend with the profound depth soil embodies. Minimalist and symbolic, can ASCII art evoke the layered complexity of soil, offering a poetic reflection of memory without flattening the
As soil cradles life and decay in its layered archive, digital representations must strive to echo this nuance, holding space for the haunting interplay of history, time, and renewal.
visceral essence of land and body?
As soil cradles life and decay in its layered archive, digital representations must strive to echo this nuance, holding space for the haunting interplay of history, time, and renewal.
In the present,
soil’s entanglement with ownership and exploitation speaks to the deep fractures caused by
commodification, reducing it from a living archive to a mere resource. This shift distorts our relationship with the earth, framing soil as a tool for profit rather than a partner in mutual sustenance.
Subdued beneath the relentless processes of agriculture, extraction and the imposition of property lines, soil bears the scars of a drawn-out violence – a legacy of settlement and colonial logics.
These arbitrary divisions echo Donna Haraway’s critique of the Capitalocene, where capitalist systems render soil not as relationship, but as object and commodity.
These arbitrary divisions echo Donna Haraway’s critique of the Capitalocene, where capitalist systems render soil not as relationship, but as object and commodity.
The earth is etched with marks of possession: boundary lines, carved names, and symbols of ownership, each a wound inflicted by the extractive narratives that deny the soil its agency and life-giving vitality.
The Anthropocene’s inheritance of exploitation highlights what is left in soil as capital gains for a few, while relationships with the land are lost for many.
As concrete imprints into soil,
a prodding intrusion,
one can sense the deep scars of extraction that accumulate, with plots demarcated and properties claimed, symbolizing a growing disconnection from the ecosystems that sustain life.
Soil here transforms into both victim, survivor and archive, recording the dissonance between human actions and the vitality of earth, while remaining an enduring witness to this fractured relationality.
ASCII art
or ecological data points mirrors a larger colonial logic embedded in digital systems. Historically, mapping and digitizing land served to surveil, control, and justify resource extraction and colonization.
Today, digital mapping and environmental data practices often continue to reflect these colonial logics under the guise of neutrality, erasing the relational and embodied knowledge of ecosystems and Indigenous communities. For example, pollution disrupts soil’s ability to act as a memory-holder, corrupting the histories of ecosystems and cultural connections to the land. Likewise, digital archives often obscure these disruptions by abstracting them into reductive datasets.
Looking to the future, Natasha Myers’ concept of ‘queer ecologies’ invites us into imaginative and speculative futures, where we perform life in ways that break free from linear constraints, questioning, giggling, and transforming as we go. In this view of queer temporalities, soil becomes more than a medium; it’s a space for
playfulness and re-imagination,
where cycles of life are unpredictable and nonlinear, expanding beyond boundaries.
This sense of expansive possibility extends to how we represent and engage with memory – ecological, embodied or cultural – through digital forms.
The challenge lies in designing these representations to embrace nuance, relationality, and dynamism, resisting the tendency of computational systems to decontextualize and flatten the complexities they aim to encode. By transforming ecological and embodied memories into formats like video ASCII art, is it possible to unlock the potential to
‘awaken’
these static symbols, moving beyond reduction to create expressions of memory that engage with their tactile, historical and cultural resonances.
In embracing the necessity of decomposition, we recognize soil’s role as both the site and the witness of death—swallowed, eaten, and missed, its nutrients reabsorbed, enriching what comes next. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's concept of composting as an ethical and joyful practice reminds us that, from this death, life blooms anew. Through decomposition, homes emerge, life writhes, as we do, in a continuous process of becoming. Here, composting transforms decay into a dynamic, life-giving process that embodies care and regeneration, nurturing new life in the earth's embrace.
This vision proposes a multispecies future where our embodied connections to soil embrace its textures, scents, and dynamic life forms. By fostering these relationships, we co-create a resilient, multispecies world where life’s cycles are honored and celebrated. This queer, regenerative approach to soil reconnects us to an earth that invites us to
witness and join in the joyful, unending dance of death and renewal.
INFLUENCED & INSPIRED BY
- BRGM (n.d.) How to build new soil.
https://www.brgm.fr/en/reference-completed-project/how-build-new-soil - Bomb Magazine (2021) Forms that don’t yet exist: Kiyan Williams interviewed. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2021/11/10/forms-that-dont-yet-exist-kiyan-williams-interviewed/
- De Souza, K. (n.d.) Soil stories of Coranderrk. http://www.kegdesouza.com/portfolio/soil-stories-of-coranderrk/
- Edge Effects (n.d.) Soil memory and the Plantationocene. https://edgeeffects.net/soil-memory-plantationocene/
- Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Liboiron, M. (2021) Pollution is colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.
- Martens, R. L. (n.d.) Soil memory.
https://rl-martens.net/soilmemory - McPherson, T. (2018) Feminist in a software lab: Difference + design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Myers, N. (2019) How to grow livable worlds: Ten (not-so-easy) steps for life in the Planthroposcene. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 5(1). https://catalystjournal.org
- Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017) Matters of care in technoscience: Assembling neglected things. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Zabriskie (n.d.) Planetary embodiment.
https://zabriskie.de/products/planetary-embodiment_ - Williams, R. (1999) Ghosts of place. Society & Space, 17(6), pp. 827–831.
- Yusoff, K. (2018) A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
- Abul Mogard (2015) Half Light of Dawn, Circular Forms
- Laurel Halo (2023) Belleville, Atlas. Performed by: Coby Sey, James Underwood, Laurel Halo, Lucy Railton
- Oliver Coates (2020) Them Prolouge, A Little Night Music: Aural Apparations from the Geographic North. Performed by: Malibu, Oliver Coates
Assistance with ASCII video code Camille Rojas & Benjamin Witt
Forever greateful to Jaz Fairy J for sharing her love, dedication and talents with Soil Study
Humble thanks and eternal gratitude to
Ros Gray, Jol Thoms, Elly Clarke and my fellow Art & Ecology Peers
Forever greateful to Jaz Fairy J for sharing her love, dedication and talents with Soil Study
Humble thanks and eternal gratitude to
Ros Gray, Jol Thoms, Elly Clarke and my fellow Art & Ecology Peers