When Peat Speaks
- ArtBomb
- Aug 11
- 2 min read
Miranda Whall
When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Gassy Bubbly Ensemble (Part Two)
Composer and singer-songwriter Isa Suarez, a custom-built robot – the ‘Talkie Box’, a turf of peat and visual artist Miranda Whall will form an ensemble. The Talkie Box will sonify remote data from a soil sensor network installed on a degraded ‘Cinderella’ peatland in the Cambrian Mountains, West Wales, as well as from a probe embedded in a turf of peat cut from the site. It will also sonify real-time carbon dioxide and methane readings taken from within a 3.5metre white inflatable bubble.
Inside the bubble, Suarez will improvise in response to the numerical data readings on the fluctuations of the peat's temperature and moisture levels, the gas readings, the degraded peatland landscape, and the peat ecosystem.
Outside the bubble, Whall will transcribe the live sonified data onto its exterior surface using a Rotring isograph pen. Whall will respond in real time to the shifting sonic outputs of the Talkie Box and to Suarez’s vocal and instrumental improvisations, rendering the dynamic interplay of ecological data and human expression as a kind of visual score on the bubble’s surface.
As the drawing gradually drifts across the bubble’s midline, the acoustics and the voice of the bog will converge. This Performance will invite audiences to witness a multisensory, posthuman event where peat, air, time, and breath will form the elemental score: peat will speak through centuries of carbon, decay, and memory; air will move invisibly within the bubble; time will be drawn in ink across the bubble’s surface; and breath will be shared, held, and exchanged.
Funded by @co2rehub – the UK’s national Green House Gas Removal Research Hub, led by the University of Oxford.
Previous ArtBomb Project:
When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Gassy Chorus (Part One)
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.
