BY THE CODE OF SOIL

Excerpts from an article by Kasia Molga, lead artist behind By the Code of Soil

Soil is a vital element of our biosphere – the life-building entity, the recycling mechanism, the fertile ground for our food, the geopolitical territory and the land. Soil is as fundamental as air and water, but is absent from conversations about environmental conditions, unlike pollutants in air or the quality of water
Technological advances such as sensors, satellite imagery, machine learning and networked devices can help scientists and farmers to monitor soil conditions on micro and macro scales; and help in understanding how the condition of soil can change - vital for speculations on possible future scenarios.

As an artist and designer who probes emerging technology in an environmental context, I have been working with the GROW Observatory, and the VERTIGO STARTS programme on artistic projects dealing with soil condition, soil moisture data and growers’ farming practices.

By the Code of Soil is about handing power over to the land – to soil – and depicting it as a first and foremost living organism; not as a resource whose capacity must be maximized for our own benefits. It is inspired by Bruno Latour’s idea of being ‘terrestrial’, which insists that while current political trends let us down in addressing environmental transition, we must start thinking about the material nature of soil - upon which nine or ten billion of us will be living in the future.

By the Code of Soil also comments on the role of IoT and the billions of networked sensors, built with rare Earth elements. These devices provide a constant flow of data and information about environmental conditions, depending on an intricate system of cyber security and faith in impartiality and purity of data.

However, not only do they fail to engage most of us in considering different ways of living, but they can also be hacked relatively easily (as the Mirai botnet has demonstrated); data and its transmission routes can be manipulated by algorithms with consequences beyond human control.

I wrote a speculative story at the start of my thinking on this project; here is an excerpt….

BY THE CODE OF SOIL

It is 2050 - we have a ballooning population in Europe of 1.5 bln people, long droughts and heatwaves. Food shortages must be avoided. Soil is now the most precious element of our times.

Around 30 years ago, roughly 10,000 soil moisture sensors were placed in the soils of Europe by growers. Now, in 2050, when so much soil has been depleted, sensors are everywhere, tirelessly monitoring soil conditions and transmitting data to the so called ‘main system’. This system is decentralized, perhaps using blockchain, so each result, each data reading and interpretation is recorded and legitimized, and can never be faked.

It all started rather innocently. The AI software interpreting soil moisture data had a glitch of some sort, and suddenly part of it was distributed over the network to all networked devices – our personal computers, corporate databases and servers. ‘The AI became OI’ – was the saying that took hold among people; OI being Organic Intelligence.

And everyday, at a certain time, all the networked devices stopped most of their processes and tuned in to the data coming from soil sensors - like a ritual of some sort. We could all hear the “song of the soil” – a reminder that we cannot be without the land.

The sound is carried by the speakers of each device, and those of us who are in front of monitors, observe the visualization – dictated by data – of the health of the land.