Scroll down to view the animated, imaginary journey through soil, which is playing inside the Rhizotron.
My favourite film, as a child, was ‘Fantastic Voyage’ – a scary and exciting journey of shrunken medics through the inner workings of their ailing patient. I am sure it had something to do with my first career choice!
I wouldn’t’ want to watch it now, because I am pretty sure the effects were not very special, but today’s standards. But, what an amazing journey was conjured for us, by the artistic team. What imaginations they must have had to take us somewhere we no-one had ever been!
Picturing yourself in an alien place, is like a thought experiment. It allows you to engage in new ways; explore different perspectives, engage emotionally with a subject and pose new questions.
In The New Blue Peter Garden: Discover Soil, I have created an earthy chamber; a journey down into the soil. Here, children are surrounded by soil; its textures; smell and blanketed sounds. What would it be like to travel through soil? To be a mini-beast or micro-organism inhabited that world? What is soil?
An answer comes in the form of an imaginary, abstract journey, created by Polish 3D visual artist Zuzanne Kolodziedj. In the Rhizotron we are playing her 4-minute film on the earthen wall of the chamber.
You too, can take the journey into the soil.
Click here:
Have a look at other examples of Zuzanna’s work here:
https://www.instagram.com/vi.zuza
Zuzanne used authentic recordings from the soil thanks to the Sounding Soil project by Marcus Maeder, Zurich University of the Arts, Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology ICST, 2017-2020
https://www.soundingsoil.ch/en/
Audio production and editing was by:
Marcin Szulc / Coastline Northern Cuts
https://northerncuts.com/en/