Secrets of Soil
Nathan Schmidt, Contributing Editor
A couple of weeks ago, I helped a friend move his woodpile. In these days of central gas and electric heat, many of us don’t bother much with woodpiles, and having split a few logs myself, I’d have to say that’s a mixed blessing. Not just because of the whole climate thing—sort of like buying tomatoes at Wal Mart, central heating takes you away from the actual experience of warming: selecting logs, curing and caring for them, and carting them to a place where they’ll dry out better in the sun. Then again, hauling logs is also a sweaty, dusty mess.
However, let me tell you, there is a whole cosmos crawling around inside a woodpile. The Earth stores some of its best nasty stuff in there, from gloopy, spongy mold to wriggly white larvae to this one mother spider who was so gigantic that I left her log alone. Compared to the spider, I suppose I was also of an imposing size, but still, game recognizes game. Moving the woodpile was one of the most meaningful environmental experiences I’ve had this year. Believing that the Earth is at its best when on sublime display in places like Yosemite can keep us from enjoying some of the richest gifts the Earth has to offer. The lesson of the woodpile is about how much we miss when we allow ourselves limited narratives about desireable biodiversity—when we get too caught up with big, regal mammals and splendid mountain vistas. Earthly experiences can and should be sweaty, crawly, oozy, loamy, and moist.
I use the word “cosmos” because it signifies the worlds within worlds that are always swirling around us, frequently taking little notice of us until we appear as great lumbering interruptions. This is important, because otherwise if I were to tell you without context that artist Henry Driver’s Secrets of Soil (commissioned by Screen South and BBC Arts) is a cosmic video game, you might think of something like Outer Wilds or No Man’s Sky, where freewheeling protagonists explore the outer reaches of space. Secrets of Soil is out to remind us that there are universes around us everywhere, especially in the murky microbiotic world beneath our feet.
Secrets of Soil is an interactive, free-to-play art piece that’s all about revealing the cosmic essence of dirt. It’s a short, meditative first-person experience that takes you through the world of soil at the microscopic level, from microbes and bacteria to nematodes and root systems. Specifically, it focuses on the relationship between soil and agriculture, as a gentle voiceover guides you through a dazzling world of loops and swirls and zigzags. Inspired by his family’s attempts to make their farm carbon-negative, Driver takes you on a short odyssey underground that will leave you just as conversant about no-till farming and cover crops as it will about plant-to-plant communication.
Now, any conceptual game like this that bills itself as a work of art is going to have to find a way to skirt around the problem of edutainment—frankly, upon hearing the description of the game, I was a little worried that this was all going to be a bit Magic School Bus. Driver quickly assuaged my concerns with his dazzling use of light and color. This might be a game about soil, but I don’t think there’s a single “earth tone” in it. In Driver’s hands, dirt becomes a kaleidoscope that twists, shifts, and distorts to great effect. Dirt feels less like something solid and more like a dream vision, which isn’t surprising since some of Driver’s other works are digital representations of visual hallucinations. If you’ve ever enjoyed an abstract walking sim (or an abstract expressionist painting, for that matter), you’ll find a lot to love in Secrets of Soil.
Because I’m always thinking about what it means to call something a video game, Secrets of Soil left me with a lot of questions about the relationship between playing a game and viewing a piece of interactive art. Driver’s piece TEO, for example, which he did with artist Barbara Dougan, is a piece where gallery visitors control an interactive avatar. The difference in space—an art gallery with other people vs. sitting alone in my house—is significant, but I think there’s even more to be said about the playing/viewing distinction that works like Secrets of Soil bring out. It might be relatively slow and quiet, but it’s still a game where you literally play in the dirt.
The experience as a whole only runs to about a half an hour, and some of the shifts between scenes can be a little jarring, although I love the way the game lets the player decide when they are ready to move on to the next part. Your relationship to the game’s narrator will also be determined by your tolerance for some in-game didacticism, and I think it would be interesting to see works like this in the future that take a page out of Lost Ember’s book, making it possible to toggle the narrator on and off, in case a repeat viewer wants to enjoy a purely abstract experience. Still, if the woodpile was a reminder that there are busy worlds all around me that I too often fail to recognize, Secrets of Soil gave me a new spin on that well-worn Shakespeare quote: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
