Crosstimbers: A Graphic Score + Sonification of Oklahoma Soil Microbes
In collaboration with vocalist Shari Feldman
Video, length 2 minutes
“Crosstimbers” draws from the tradition of visual scores and graphic, or non-traditional, music notation. In this work, bacteria and fungi isolated from a soil sample in Ada, Oklahoma make marks on cotton fabric by partially decomposing it. That fabric acts as a musical score and the data encoded there is translated into sound. We can hear patterns in repeated musical motifs – which microbes were isolated most frequently, the ratio of aerobic versus non-aerobic bacteria, the ratio of gram negative versus gram positive bacteria, moving musical lines representing motile microbes, softer sounds representing rounder shapes.
I buried six 22” x 22” untreated white cotton squares in Wintersmith Park for the months of May and June 2023. On retrieval one sample was missing and one was almost completely decomposed. The remaining four became the audible part of this project.
I sent a small soil sample to MR-DNA Lab in Shallowater, Texas to try to find out these microbes’ names. Thank you Dr Rhonda Janke and Ecoartspace for this idea and the possibility to sequence genetic information this way.
The video work was shown alongside other members of Ecoartspace’s Dialoghi del Suolo / Soil Dialogues as a pop-up exhibition as part of the International Union of Soil Sciences Centennial conference at Art-Ex Il Conventino, Florence Italy, 2024.
Made in collaboration with: top 22 microbial collaborators (by phylum and genus): Verrucomicrobia Cthoniobacter, Actinobacteria Gaiella, Acidobacteria Aridibacter, Actinobacteria Conexibacter, Proteobacteria Bradyrhizobium, Proteobacteria Rhodoplanes, Verrucomicrobia Pedosphaera, Actinobacteria Solirubrobacter, Actinobacteria Mycobacterium, Bacteriodetes Terrimonas, Proteobacteria Chondromyces, Proteobacteria Reyranella, Cercozoa Gymnochlora, Ascomycota Penicillium, Ascomycota Cladophialophora, Mucoromycota Mortierella, Cercozoa Bigelowiella, Ascomycota Trichoderma, Ascomycota Acremonium, Ciliophora Neobalantidium, Xanthopyceae Vacheria, Chytridiomycota Maunachytrium
See the full process and score interpretation notes here:
Process photos from making Crosstimbers:
Additional photos of the IUSS conference exhibition at ArtEX Il Conventino, including the work of other Ecoartspace collaborators in the Soil Dialogues work group (many images from Patricia Lea Watts of Ecoartspace):
