The responsive kinetic installation Sonoseismic Earth presents Earth in the age of the Anthropocene, the geological epoch of industrial societies. It is an age that has witnessed disruptions in the Earth’s systems on a planetary scale. The global capitalist structure of the world does not allow human beings to act globally, or to counter the planetary crisis produced by inevitable consumption. The installation makes a possible entry into a planetary perspective, into the sensual and haptic relationship between the human and the planet. The depletion of fossil fuels in the Earth’s crust causes tectonic cracks; hence, in the installation, the globe is gradually polluted. The rendering of seismographic shifts intensifies with the proximity of human beings detected by sensors. The planet emits the infrasonic sound of earthquakes; it submerges the human in the ubiquitous acoustic space with no identifiable origin. Humans are caught in the drama of the endless circulation of capital. The crisis of the planet is the crisis of the system.

Sonoseismic Earth tries to condense the effect of the fossil fuel industry into an experience of carbon war waged against all life forms on the planet. At the forefront of this war is the global distribution of water. The mechanism in the installation contains a solution of water and fossil fuels that is squeezed out of the globe and produces a poignant odor in the surroundings, making the pollution tangible for the senses. The water is not cleaned, as it is part of a planetary metabolic rift. The metabolic rift may only be overcome in millions of years. One of the candidates for replenishment of the earth’s fossil fuel reserves is a living product, an industrial chicken. By putting the bones of industrial chickens into the polluted water-oil solution, Sonoseismic Earth announces the replenishing of fossil fuels in the distant future. However, it cannot announce human existence.