Blog: Our Garden Lab Whispers Grow Project Begins With Mud Batteries and Macroscopes!

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Blog: Our Garden Lab Whispers Grow Project Begins With Mud Batteries and Macroscopes!

Creatives Paul Granjon, Ruth Hennell and Oliver Woods spent a rainy day experimenting at the Springfield Allotments.

What is a mud battery? It is a battery made from just soil and two metal parts. It captures energy from microscopic organisms in the soil. These microscopic organisms release a small amount of electrons/electricity as they consume and break-down organic matter in the soil. In this case, it is just enough to power a tiny red light bulb. Paul has previously worked with these batteries to create works like ‘Singing Compost’ and ‘Power of Mud’.

Since the batteries can create soundwaves, fellow collaborator Ruth has been wondering if we could play with different ways we can perceive it – slowing it down, finding patterns, or using it to generate soil drawings. Meanwhile, Oliver was amazed at how this technology enabled the earth to communicate something that is usually invisible to us. What else does the earth have to say? More experimentation will happen soon!

Left – Paul Granjon demonstrating a mud battery.
Middle – A mud battery: a pot of soil with red and yellow cables plugged into a black monitor reading 0.32.
Right – A tiny circuit board with a mini red light bulb wired to a pot of soil.

Paul also shared a macroscope camera which captures magnified images. The camera could be attached to different objects and would feedback a live video viewable on a laptop. This means you can get really creative with where you put the camera, using it to view previously inaccessible angles. The group tried attaching it to the bottom of a stick, exploring angles close to the ground. They also had ideas for making the macroscope controllable from the top of the stick.

Ruth used the digital macroscope to continue her ongoing exploration of the intersection of disabled access aids and the natural world. She has been considering the connections with the different ways more-than-human beings inhabit the garden lab space, like snails, who carry their own shells with them, just she carries her mat!

Ruth often needs to lie down on her mat on the floor throughout the day due to chronic pain, so looking from the ground is an angle quite familiar to her. It was exciting to share this angle with Oliver Woods, a natural world photographer who usually photographs things from his wheelchair. Ruth has been wondering whether this technology could be used to enable her mum Hilary, who is visually impaired, to experience the smaller details in nature; thinking of the possibilities to adjust the contrast or turn digital images into tactile objects at KWMC The Factory.

Left – Oliver sitting in his wheelchair using a macroscope camera attached to a laptop.
Middle – Hands with a sun/moon tattoo holding a macroscope camera attached to a laptop.
Right – Ruth holding a stick with a macroscope camera attached at the bottom.

Left – Macroscope camera in action, tied to a stick and lying on a mat.
Middle – Image captured by the macroscope camera: close-up of wheelchair wheels over a mat and grass.
Right – Image captured by the macroscope camera: close-up of raised bumps on a purple mat with grass in the background.

What an exciting start! We can’t wait to share more as this project progresses. Keep an eye on our project webpage for upcoming blogs.

Garden Lab Whispers Grow is funded by Bristol + Bath Creative R+D Grounding Technologies and supported by Impetus. To carry out the project, KWMC is collaborating with Paul Granjon, Ruth Hennell and local green groups. Paul is a Wales-based artist with a background in DIY technology and Ruth is a Bristol-based disabled interdisciplinary designer and accessibility advocate. Together, we will co-create a ‘garden lab’ to grow more caring relationships with nature and inclusive processes for climate action. Supporting KWMC’s aims for setting up future long-term citizen science programmes in the neighbourhood.