Things like soil and humidity are not things we hear.
However, an exhibit at New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) in South River allows the public to do just that.
The exhibit was created by York University professor Jane Tingley and it’s called "Foresta Inclusive: (ex)tending towards."
Using the trees at the Charitable Research Reserve in Cambridge, Ont. last summer, Tingley and her team strapped several pods on the trees.
The pods contain sensors that record the air and soil temperatures, humidity, wind, carbon dioxide, and even particulate matter in the air.
All this data was recorded and the public can play back the data with the NAISA exhibit.
Tingley says the recorded data is an ongoing visualization of what goes on in a tree over 24 hours.
In terms of time, the visualization keeps moving forward so that the observer is not always looking at the same 24 hours of the tree.
But being a sound museum, Tingley’s exhibit has to deliver sound and not just visuals.
Enter Hrysovalanti Maheras, a PhD student at York University.
Taking the data the pods collected, Maheras sonified that information into non-speech audio to create what soil and humidity would sound like.
Maheras says the sounds are synthesized, and although what soil and humidity sound like may be perceived as alien to people, there are more familiar synthesized sounds included with the exhibit, like birds, flies, mosquitoes, bees, chipmunks as well as rain and thunder.
The sounds are heard by placing one’s hand over a pseudo-like tree that contains all the data.
Additionally, the audio is carried over a four-channel speaker system in the NAISA gallery meaning the sound travels from one speaker to the other speakers in the room, creating the illusion that the animals are moving.
Tingley has displayed her exhibit in other communities.
But the exhibit in South River is the debut of the sound component and it’s an addition that Tingley will make permanent.
Tingley says in addition to the sights and sounds, she’s added a smell component to the exhibit.
She replicated the smell of a forest after rainfall by periodically releasing geosmin into the gallery.
Tingley has the pods she used to record the data on soil scattered on the NAISA floor.
It’s Tingley’s goal to use her pods to record data from trees elsewhere in the world to see how and if the information differs.
So far, Tingley has recorded data from trees in India.
Her exhibit is on display at NAISA until March 31.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter with Almaguin News. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.