This hands-on workshop explores soil as a medium for listening, transmission, and vibration. Participants will build simple soil microphones using piezoelectric contact microphones coupled to metal rods and plates, creating inexpensive instruments for hearing vibrations that travel through earth, plants, stones, roots, and other materials. We will also be building simple preamps for these microphones and exploring how electronics work.
Together, we will experiment with different forms of mechanical coupling, amplification, and resonance, including metal probes for listening at different depths and resonant plates that increase the surface area through which vibrations can be collected. Components will be protected with dipped latex coatings, allowing participants to experiment with temporary placement in soil and damp environments.
Alongside construction, the workshop introduces basic principles of contact microphones, impedance, vibration, amplification, and field recording. We will conclude by taking the microphones outside for a collective listening session, comparing how different materials, depths, and locations shape what can be heard.
No previous electronics, soldering, or audio experience is required. Each participant will leave with a functioning soil microphone and preamp for continued experimentation and field recording.
This workshop will be held in person at the WGXC Catskill Studio from XXXX p.m. on XX, December X.
Workshop registration fee: $25
Materials fee: $45
Click here to register!
ABOUT CHLOE ALEXANDRA THOMPSON
Chloe Alexandra Thompson is a Cree interdisciplinary artist, composer, and creative technologist whose work approaches sound as a relational and embodied medium. Her practice moves between spatial audio, field recording, synthesis, installation, performance, and experimental technologies to investigate how listening can create relationships between bodies, environments, and technical systems.
Her work considers acoustic ecology alongside Indigenous approaches to listening, attending to vibration, resonance, and environmental sound as forms of knowledge that exceed language. Through installations and participatory listening situations, Thompson creates conditions for encountering sound not simply as representation, but as a material event moving through air, water, architecture, bodies, and land.
She is a current Onassis ONX Studio member and has participated in residencies and programs with Pioneer Works, Eyebeam, MIT Open Documentary Lab with the Indigenous Screen Office of Canada, HERVISIONS x Arebyte, and Yucca Valley Material Lab.
