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Fossils take 10,000 years to form but capture a moment in time, recorded in stone for millennia. As our planet faces impending natural apocalypse due to the Climate Emergency, the speed of change is accelerating. If we could create a fossil for our time, what would it look like?
Although the soundscape of the natural world is louder than has ever been recorded, the noise is predominantly artificial, industrial, man-made. WiFi, Sonar, Bluetooth, electrical frequencies, digitally produced noise, vibrations from construction, mining and transport surround and penetrate all of us with increasing intensity. Nature has tried to compensate by raising its voice – birds sing louder now to be heard but find it harder to defend their territories and find a mate. Sound pollution distresses organisms and disrupts biodiversity.
Curiously silence is the inevitable outcome of artificial cacophony. As species struggle to survive, they disappear, and the natural world loses its song. Unseen by all are the sounds of the soil on which all life ultimately depends for food. More than 50% of the planet’s species live in the earth below our feet. Soil that registers a great diversity of sounds is healthy because this indicates a greater range of organisms. When it is healthy and happy, soil sings.
Vinyl records make sound material and often link us to memories and emotions far beyond the musical composition etched into their surface. Music records, have two sides. One is the successful hit; the B side rarely made the charts.
I took recordings of soil from a protected nature reserve and soil from an industrial estate. By bending the frequency charts into an auditory loop, I created an image resonant of acoustic soil chromatography impressions and etched them both into stone to make a modern fossil record.
Just as ancient fossils are silent, these too can only be read by eye and hand. They record our place in time, in this moment of mass silencing. You can feel the etches of the soil song with your fingers and feel its sound, a memento mori of life before the silence in the noise.
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