LOUISE PERMIIN

Vibrant Soils #2 – Exhibition Spinderihallerne, 2024

Look down
What do you see?
Look closer,
Who do you see?

Everything in the world is connected to the earth. However, living earth is becoming increasingly rare, making it necessary to understand our connection to it. If we do not bring our attention to this attachment through our senses, we have no stories to tell the future. That is why artist Sarah Trahan and design researcher Louise Permiin have started the project Vibrant Soils. This project lies at the intersection of art, science and agriculture. Through a mixture of biological, technological and co-design processes, Vibrant Soils aims to establish sensory connections between us, humans, and the earth’s living ecosystem, thus highlighting the important, but often invisible, processes that take place in the ground beneath our feet.

Close your eyes and listen,
What do you hear?

Field work

What do you hear?
Maybe you can hear: a lot of black and orange ants, a butterfly, a caterpillar, four green earthworms, three blackbirds, a train, wind, three snails, two centipedes, two queen ants, pigeons, a plane, a car on asphalt road , lots of red ant and two bench-biter.

Exhibition

Did you know that the earth is alive and that every day you walk on top of a lot of small earthlings who help to ensure that we can breathe and live on earth?

If we really listened to the songs of frogs, birds and insects, would we tolerate suburban sprawl and the graveyard of biodiversity such as lawns and conventional agriculture?

By combining biological research and artistic approaches, we investigate sound recordings, videos and 3D modeling of the presence of Earthlings in the Danish landscape. The exhibition is a sensual invitation to dive underground, explore subterranean habitats and this connection to the earth around us.

1. 3D printed “earth sounds” made from wild clay.
2. Research video of the life beneath our feet and collection of earth sounds.

Design

What if you could hold a sound in your hands? These 3D sculptures are the experimental results of our explorations in translating vibrations from the earth’s ecosystem into sculptural objects. To realize these material forms, we use a co-design process where we humans together with the earth’s ecosystem and various technologies all influence the form of each sculpture. Sound recordings of earthlings have been used to generate digital 3D models and subsequently a series of 3D printed wild “earth sound” clay sculptures.

With this work, we are interested in making visible the hidden vibrations in the ground beneath our feet; here we use the earth as both subject and artistic medium. A cooperation with technology and the earth’s ecosystem

“Interesting work with sound from the grounds and how they are turned into 3D wild clay printed sound-bides.“

– Visitor at Spinderihallerne, 2024

Project managed by

• Artist Sarah Trahan
• Design researcher Louise Permiin
• and Biologist and Senior Researcher Emeritus Paul Henning Krogh

Collaboration

• 3D-clay printing ceramist Anna Andersen

Funded by

• Spinderihallerne, Vejle (DK)