Sissel Marie Tonn (DK) in collaboration with Jonathan Reus (US/NL)

The Intimate Earthquake Archive is an ongoing research project and interactive installation dealing with the man-made earthquakes in the Dutch province of Groningen. When I started the research in 2015, I came across an overwhelming amount of data in scientific archives: a warehouse full of core samples, sand and soil tests, as well as the immense database of seismic recordings managed by the KNMI. Meanwhile, hearing the stories of people who had experienced the earthquakes, I wondered what the role of the body might be in the archiving of these events.

The installation consists of hanging sandstone core samples--each emitting one earthquake recorded in Groningen through a long-wave radio system. The public is invited to put on wearable 'tactile vests' with inbuilt transducer speakers, which react to the transmitters in the installation, allowing the wearer to explore the seismic data with their body. Sound artist Jonathan Reus has created unique tactile compositions for each earthquake, which relate the movement of the vibrations played onto the body to the actual movements of the earthquakes across the land. Thus the data collected by the KNMI is used as raw material for creating tactile sensory experiences.
The earthquake compositions range from barely perceptible to intense, and the work is thus a 'test ground' for the threshold of sensory perception, offering a kind of "deep listening" to the earth as it is being affected by our dependency on fossil fuels. The project is continuously under development, as we are working on new ways of experimenting with the available data, the socio-political context of each earthquake (e.g. which new legislation a particular event afforded) or how sub-sonic seismic data acts on the resonating qualities of the body (and using this in the composition). My long-term dream is to expand the installation to encompass the entire data bank of more than 1400 man-made earthquakes over the span of 30 years.

Links: https://jonathanreus.com/portfolio/the-intimate-earthquake-archive

Compositions, seismic data integration: Jonathan Reus
Hardware design/Interaction: Marije Baalman, Jonathan Reus, Carsten Tonn- Petersen
With support from: Theodora Niemeijer Fund, Van Abbemuseum, TNO - Innovation for Life, KNMI, Artefact festival, Stroom Den Haag, Stimuleringsfonds NL

Sissel Marie Tonn (DK) is an artist based in The Hague. In her practice she explores the complex ways in which humans are entangled with their environments. She is particularly fascinated by the threshold of our senses, and how we might be able to "tune" our bodies to subtle environmental changes through various forms of knowing. She makes wearable, sculptural, or performative 'props,' which challenge and question the body's preconfigured modes of perception and attention and invite the audience to engage directly with them. Together with Jonathan Reus and Flora Reznik, Sissel runs the artist initiative The Reading Room, a nomadic event series focusing on ways of reading and studying together in a non-institutional setting.