Index

Latent Soils

Installation, various materials
Kunstraum Lakeside, October 1st - November 5th, 2021

The exhibition Latent Soils revolves around the modified, artificial soil of Vienna, which has been a subject of scientific research for quite some time now. Eduard Suess, for instance, published a geological map of Vienna in 1862, which featured the city "s natural geological layers but also the massive accumulations owed to its two thousand years of settlement history. Around 140 years before the term Anthropocene was coined to describe the age when humans began to dominate the geological, atmospheric, and biological processes on planet Earth, a survey of the Viennese “debris” by the founder of the Vienna geological school visualized human influence on the shape of geological layers for the first time.

The starting point for Katrin Hornek"s installation is data obtained for research purposes, stored in various archeological and geological archives. While they provide insights into the past, they never give a general overview of the status quo, as the scientific assessment of Viennese soil usually prepares for its transformation: The Municipal Department of Urban Archeology is called into action, for example, when remains of human activities surface during construction work, or when geological drill cores are probed to inform builders about necessary static measures and to provide security in the event of damage.

The artist conceives this extensive collection of selective information as “data landscapes”, which unfold parallel to the phenomena they capture.The soils themselves also store, like instruments, their own modification. They serve as recordings of urban transformations involving a wide variety of different agents — be it human, faunal, weather dependent factors,Latent Soils is an attempt to chart “the potential of practices based on sensory experience”, notes Katrin Hornek. The objective is not only to “rationalize the emerging archives of the Anthropocene” but to create formats that enable recipients “to imagine, feel , and connect with them”.

The artist strives to “lend this rather inaccessible, complex, and everchanging artificial urban soil a body”. This spatiotemporal entity manifests in the reception of the Latent Soils exhibition, whose individual sections grant different access points and approaches. The sounds of words like “bones | concrete surface | interstratified limestone | gel | light gray | remnants of roots | colorful | turf | edged | rust brown | leftover brick | brittle | glass shards | round) | 100 mm | pieces of wood | light-brown green | earthy | solid | stiff | nan | metal | domestic waste | 50 mm | 5.00% | clayey” permeates the exhibition space and can be read in parallel in a video installation. They are all the words used thus far in the city"s drill core register to document human modifications to the soil of Vienna since 1831. The 87,963 material entries were ordered — including errors, description variants, abbreviations, and combinations with punctuation characters — according to their frequency and read in by performer Sabina Holzer in an eight-hour session. The long list of terms and the gradual tiring of the voice make the extent of the human interventions tangible. Moreover, the different spellings of certain terms remind us that the drill core register is owed to the efforts of a great number of people over a long period of time, and thus to collective authorship. The most frequently used word is “brick”, a crucial inorganic building material for the city since the Roman times. Second place goes to “concrete”, even though it has only been common in Vienna since the 19th century — another hint about how the transformation of the Earth"s surface has accelerated as of late.

While the video installation is exclusively dedicated to words, five monitors lying on the floor show image footage taken from the databank of Vienna"s Department of Urban Archeology. These original photos document the constant restructuring of the urban soil and thereby spur visual apprehension of the implicit large-scale transformation processes. The artist fed thousands of images from the city"s archeological archive into the StyleGAN generator on the Runway platform, which then produced new images from the material. Browsing through seas of data, Style Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) learn the parameters of various image typologies to create new imagery. In this way, photographic documentation of real people or landscapes turn into new representations with a highly persuasive visual power. Hornek uses these deep learning algorithms to devise images of what does not exist (yet). Strung together into films, the perpetually altering imagery helps us to perceive the ground beneath our feet as something instable and shaped. Unlike the material stored in the city archives, the StyleGAN images do not capture something from the past; rather, their recombinations open up a space of possibilities and cast a glance at one of countless possible futures.

Katrin Hornek transfers this potential back into the analog space: Digital objects derived from the synthetic image production process assume analog shapes as sculptures. their recombinations open up a space of possibilities and cast a glance at one of countless possible futures. Katrin Hornek transfers this potential back into the analog space: Digital objects derived from the synthetic image production process assume analog shapes as sculptures. their recombinations open up a space of possibilities and cast a glance at one of countless possible futures. Katrin Hornek transfers this potential back into the analog space: Digital objects derived from the synthetic image production process assume analog shapes as sculptures. Latent Soils at Kunstraum Lakeside enables visitors to grasp the formation of the soil, as the artist puts it, “on molecular and planetary scales, through a multitude of agents and forces in an interplay of human and non-human influences”. In this context, grasping has less to do with a rational conception, rather a sense for dimensions and timeframes.

 

Production & artistic supervision: TE-R

With many thanks to: Kira Lappé, Martin Mosser (Stadtarchäologie Wien) and Bruno Szenk

With financial support from: WWTF

Text: Gudrun Ratzinger

Latent Soils, exhibition space view
Photo: Johannes Puch
Katrin Hornek Latent Soils
Latent Soils, exhibition space view
Photo: Johannes Puch
Katrin Hornek Latent Soils

Der Boden von Wien (The Ground of Vienna), 2021

Video, 4K, sound, screen capture, 5:17 h

Material descriptions of all human-made deposits in the soil of Vienna. Ordered by the frequency of their mention: from the most to the least. Photo: J. Puch

 

Katrin Hornek Latent Soils

Latent Soils, 2021

1 of 5 HD videos, machine learning generated images by Runway ML trained by the digitalised photo archive of the Department of Urban Archaeology Vienna, approx. 19 mins each: Frankhplatz, Rennweg 52, Marchettigasse, Steinergasse 16, Wipplingerstrasse. Photo: J. Puch

Katrin Hornek Latent Soils

Algorithmic forms casted in disturbed soils (Thaliastrasse), 2021

Cement, construction waste, colour pigments, stone polish. Forms generated by Runway ML (machine learning tool), trained by the digitalized photo archive of the Department of Urban Archaeology (Vienna), casted on excavation material

Katrin Hornek Latent Soils

Algorithmic forms casted in disturbed soils (Thaliastrasse), 2021

Cement, construction waste, colour pigments, stone polish. Photo: J. Puch

Katrin Hornek Latent Soils

Algorithmic forms casted in disturbed soils (Thaliastrasse), 2021

Cement, construction waste, colour pigments, stone polish. 

Katrin Hornek Latent Soils

Earth recorder, 2021

Photogrammetry. Sample wheel of a processed soil samples taken at Karlsplatz, carrying traces of an artificial radionuclide fallout signal. This signal originates from the global fallout of overground atomic bomb tests carried out between 1952–1964. Photo: J. Puch

Katrin Hornek Latent Soils

The exhibition Latent Soils revolves around the modified, artificial soil of Vienna, which has been a subject of scientific research for quite some time now. Eduard Suess, for instance, published a geological map of Vienna in 1862, which featured the city "s natural geological layers but also the massive accumulations owed to its two thousand years of settlement history. Around 140 years before the term Anthropocene was coined to describe the age when humans began to dominate the geological, atmospheric, and biological processes on planet Earth, a survey of the Viennese “debris” by the founder of the Vienna geological school visualized human influence on the shape of geological layers for the first time.

The starting point for Katrin Hornek"s installation is data obtained for research purposes, stored in various archeological and geological archives. While they provide insights into the past, they never give a general overview of the status quo, as the scientific assessment of Viennese soil usually prepares for its transformation: The Municipal Department of Urban Archeology is called into action, for example, when remains of human activities surface during construction work, or when geological drill cores are probed to inform builders about necessary static measures and to provide security in the event of damage.

The artist conceives this extensive collection of selective information as “data landscapes”, which unfold parallel to the phenomena they capture.The soils themselves also store, like instruments, their own modification. They serve as recordings of urban transformations involving a wide variety of different agents — be it human, faunal, weather dependent factors,Latent Soils is an attempt to chart “the potential of practices based on sensory experience”, notes Katrin Hornek. The objective is not only to “rationalize the emerging archives of the Anthropocene” but to create formats that enable recipients “to imagine, feel , and connect with them”.

The artist strives to “lend this rather inaccessible, complex, and everchanging artificial urban soil a body”. This spatiotemporal entity manifests in the reception of the Latent Soils exhibition, whose individual sections grant different access points and approaches. The sounds of words like “bones | concrete surface | interstratified limestone | gel | light gray | remnants of roots | colorful | turf | edged | rust brown | leftover brick | brittle | glass shards | round) | 100 mm | pieces of wood | light-brown green | earthy | solid | stiff | nan | metal | domestic waste | 50 mm | 5.00% | clayey” permeates the exhibition space and can be read in parallel in a video installation. They are all the words used thus far in the city"s drill core register to document human modifications to the soil of Vienna since 1831. The 87,963 material entries were ordered — including errors, description variants, abbreviations, and combinations with punctuation characters — according to their frequency and read in by performer Sabina Holzer in an eight-hour session. The long list of terms and the gradual tiring of the voice make the extent of the human interventions tangible. Moreover, the different spellings of certain terms remind us that the drill core register is owed to the efforts of a great number of people over a long period of time, and thus to collective authorship. The most frequently used word is “brick”, a crucial inorganic building material for the city since the Roman times. Second place goes to “concrete”, even though it has only been common in Vienna since the 19th century — another hint about how the transformation of the Earth"s surface has accelerated as of late.

While the video installation is exclusively dedicated to words, five monitors lying on the floor show image footage taken from the databank of Vienna"s Department of Urban Archeology. These original photos document the constant restructuring of the urban soil and thereby spur visual apprehension of the implicit large-scale transformation processes. The artist fed thousands of images from the city"s archeological archive into the StyleGAN generator on the Runway platform, which then produced new images from the material. Browsing through seas of data, Style Generative Adversarial Networks (StyleGAN) learn the parameters of various image typologies to create new imagery. In this way, photographic documentation of real people or landscapes turn into new representations with a highly persuasive visual power. Hornek uses these deep learning algorithms to devise images of what does not exist (yet). Strung together into films, the perpetually altering imagery helps us to perceive the ground beneath our feet as something instable and shaped. Unlike the material stored in the city archives, the StyleGAN images do not capture something from the past; rather, their recombinations open up a space of possibilities and cast a glance at one of countless possible futures.

Katrin Hornek transfers this potential back into the analog space: Digital objects derived from the synthetic image production process assume analog shapes as sculptures. their recombinations open up a space of possibilities and cast a glance at one of countless possible futures. Katrin Hornek transfers this potential back into the analog space: Digital objects derived from the synthetic image production process assume analog shapes as sculptures. their recombinations open up a space of possibilities and cast a glance at one of countless possible futures. Katrin Hornek transfers this potential back into the analog space: Digital objects derived from the synthetic image production process assume analog shapes as sculptures. Latent Soils at Kunstraum Lakeside enables visitors to grasp the formation of the soil, as the artist puts it, “on molecular and planetary scales, through a multitude of agents and forces in an interplay of human and non-human influences”. In this context, grasping has less to do with a rational conception, rather a sense for dimensions and timeframes.

 

Production & artistic supervision: TE-R

With many thanks to: Kira Lappé, Martin Mosser (Stadtarchäologie Wien) and Bruno Szenk

With financial support from: WWTF

Text: Gudrun Ratzinger