Composting the city | Composting the net
a composting performance with Shu Lea Cheang, Martin Howse, Ayumi Matsuzaka & Tikul
Transmediale2013, Berlin

By proposing that the composting process can be applied both to the material (bodily waste, food scraps, papers, documents) and the immaterial (info-data, net archives), this composting performance writes its own worm codes while rendering massive data into data noise.

The performance was developed through a project initiated with Shu Lea Cheang in the all-year platform reSource transmedial culture berlin and brings together four streams of durational acts. Ayumi Matsuzaka enacts the cycle of waste-compost-seedling-growth-food in her practice of Terra Preta black humus composting, mixing charcoal dust with willing participants’ bodily waste (i.e. hair, nails, urine) and donated personal documents. In Martin Howse’s stream, electrochemical and temperature changes within the rotting vegetables and maturing compost is converted to sound and noise and even further in a process of worm coding. Shu Lea Cheang takes on net cultures’ mailing list web archives, retrieving thousands of threaded postings (i.e. announcements, proposals, arguments, dissertations), (ir)relevant of/to our digital existence. As the readings are fragmental and accidental, Tikul further stirs up the wormy mumble with data rendered noise, diluting meanings and senses of human intelligence into ever-fluctuating sound frequencies. The (de)generated data spectrum tumbled in the deep compost promises fresh sprouts to rise up in coming editions.

VIDEO DOCUMENTATION (3:00 excerpt)