Miranda Whall is an artist, course leader and co-director of the Centre for Material Thinking at Aberystwyth University, Wales. Whall’s practice centres around speciesism, living landscapes and ecologies, exploring the relationship between human and non-human through interdisciplinary practices such as performance, film, gentle activism and installation.

ArtBomb Project: When Peat Speaks

Inside a large white inflatable cloud, visual artist Miranda Whall, avant-garde violinist and composer Benedict Taylor, and a turve of talking peat form an invisible ensemble. As sonified sensor data from the peat fills the cloud, alongside oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other gases, Whall writes the datapoints onto the inner surface of the cloud. The violinist improvises in response, while a custom-built robot — the ‘Talkie Box’, transforms the data into a composite, disembodied voice.

Audiences will see the data drawing slowly emerge as it spreads across the cloud’s interior, and they will hear the violin and the voice of the bog converge. The cloud will inflate and deflate as the performers enter and exit - becoming a breathing, living entity. Grounded in climate science and deep listening, A Boggy Gassy Chorus invites audiences into a multisensory, posthuman performance. Peat, weather, time, and breath form the elemental score: peat speaks through centuries of carbon, decay, and memory; weather drifts through the cloud - visible and invisible, a shifting pressure system inside and out; time is drawn across the cloud’s skin in ink; and breath is shared, held, exchanged, an ensemble of matter, memory, and air.