Suon Laulu (Song of the Swamp)
10 minutes, 07 seconds
Graphic score made with hyperspectral camera data by Anne Yoncha
At Luonnonvarakeskus (Natural Resources Institute Finland)
With researchers Anne Tolvanen, Oili Tarvainen, and Anna-Liisa Välimaa
Processing code by Brian Givens
Graphic score composed for SATB choir by Hannah Selin
Performed by the Tuira Chamber Choir, directed by Satu Korppi
Premiered in October 2023 as part of New Music October Festival in Oulu, Finland
Suon Laulu (Song of the Swamp) visualizes and sonifies 160 years of soil data from post-extraction peatland landscapes. The research aims to translate data about landscapes we have permanently altered into multisensory experiences, to build affinity with our non-human neighbors and question unintended consequences of ecosystem interventions in changing climates.
Artist Anne Yoncha collaborates with ecologists at the Natural Resources Institute Finland to materialize data about peatland via an art-science approach. Peatland is a rare type of ecosystem where Sphagnum moss slowly decomposes and creates an anaerobic, water-logged desert where only it can survive and thrive. In this way the plant is similar to us. Growing on average just one millimeter a year, Sphagnum’s slow labor sequesters carbon, preserves our climate and pollen record, and holds on to lost objects and bodies. While this work focuses mostly on Sphagnum as archivist underground in the near-Arctic environment of Northern Finland – and on what happens when we remove this archive – it is meant to bring awareness to our multitudes of non-human plant and microbial neighbors living in and creating our soil wherever we live.
In this video you hear 50 humans voice approximately 160 years of peatland soil development in 10 minutes and 30 seconds. We hear two sonified soil core samples read by a hyperspectral camera. Hyperspectral cameras can see the invisible; they capture both the visible light range (about 380-740 nm for the human eye) and wavelengths that the human eye cannot see. The unrestored sample is panned left – nothing has been added to the soil. The restored sample is panned right – peat ash has been added to this soil. The sound moves from low to high, so we can hear differences over a dozen decades of peatland soil development, removal, and remediation.
Using a graphic notation format in the tradition of artists like John Cage and Cathy Berberian, we collaborate with US composer Hannah Selin as well as Satu Korpi, the leader of Tuira Chamber Choir in Oulu Finland, to create an intertwining choral voicing of this data—literally inserting the human voice into this data about ecosystems we have altered.
Collaborator Brian Givens wrote a Processing program to create a visualization of soil data to accompany the choral performance. The video component of this work uses a hyperspectral image made at Luonnonvarakeskus (Natural Resources Center Finland) as the “seed” image to scatter pixels of a stereo microscope image of a stem of Sphagnum moss. The images are then reversed so we see an image of the moss reconstructed. Soil data obscures and reveals information about the plants growing in it.
View a 10-minute talk on this project from International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) Brisbane, 2024 below:
View the SATB choral score here:
See Brian Givens’ Processing code used to make the video here:
Below is the program from the premiere performance in Oulu, Finland, October 2023:
Here is a poster about the work presented at the International Union of Soil Sciences Centennial Conference in Florence, Italy, 2024:
Thank you Friends of Fulbright Finland foundation for the generous Alumni grant which allowed me to return to Finland, revisit our study site, and attend a rehearsal of this musical piece. Photos from this trip, in May 2023, are below:
