Beneath Our Feet

Microbes play an essential role in the health of soil. The composition of soil, its acidity and temperature and how it holds moisture all impact agriculture, forestry, and the overall ecosystem. These characteristics of soil are in large part characteristics of the rhizosphere, the layer of microbial life surrounding the root structures of plants. From the outside, soil appears as a uniform material. But it is a complex, dynamic, ecosystem, with constant change and upheaval. Soil microbes are an essential part of nitrogen cycle, the carbon cycle, and carbon sequestration, which are all of critical concern in relation to human emissions and climate change. Soil microbes are essential partners in our lives at both the local level, of the food we grow, and at the global level of the anthropocene.

Beneath Our Feet project is a unique hybrid cooperative art game that connects systems at the scale of human activity and environmental events with the hidden world of soil microbes, combining a tabletop game with a Virtual Reality (VR) environment in the CAVE, a room-scale interactive immersive environment using stereoscope wall and floor projection, motion tracking, and spatialized audio. In Beneath Our Feet, players experience life in the rhizosphere alongside the sphere of human activity.

This project is part of a larger effort to bring together stakeholders from different communities and scientific disciplines, including soil scientists, computer scientists, farmers, and educators, to develop both better understanding and better computational tools to mitigate the challenges of a rapidly changing climate. One of the fundamental challenges is in visualizing and understanding connections between systems at radically different scales, from the scale of climate patterns to the scale of human activity to the scale of soil microbes. Another fundamental challenge is in creating shared language, interests, dialog, and community among stakeholders. Games can provide a space for gathering, connecting, and imagining and co-creating, and a way of simulating and experiencing systems at radically different scales. In short, Can we see the world under the soil from the point of view of a microbe?