earth code workshop 2014/2015

The shapes of the chasms themselves become "verbal roots" that spell out the difference between darkness and light. Poe ends his mental maze with the sentence — "I have graven it within the hills and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock."

[A Sedimentation of the Mind. Robert Smithson. 1966.]

How can the earth as a process be tempted to compose software?

Through a range of guided, experimental activities, the two day Earth Coding workshop actively explores links between contemporary technology and the earth, attempting to define a new form of land art.

The workshop examines the following wide-ranging questions:

How can the earth as a process be tempted to compose software?

What signals can be transduced from the earth, using equipment of the earth, revealing hidden process and how can these signals be exposed and converted to brute code?

Finally, how can a dark interpreter, a shadow substrate be constructed as an experimental situation, enabling earthy instructions to recode and give voice to that same landscape?

The whole earth process is embraced in attempt to approach these questions through the construction of a series of experimental situations.

Participants will learn how to:

• Measure and make audible and visible telluric currents flowing through the earth
• Construct an earth sensing glove to insert and feedback audio signals from the earth
• Build an earth antenna/radiomeasure electrical power from an earth battery
• Allow worms to compose poetry and listen to constructed voices from the earth
• Fashion fluid logic gates in the earth

On the second day there will be a field trip to a forest location where we will extend the first days experiments and discuss the implications and possibilities of earth coding.