Relating to Soil: Chromatography as a Tool for Environmental Engagement

Abstract

Due to the ongoing environmental crisis, there is an increased interest in technologies that strengthen relations to the environment. This pictorial contributes to a broader discussion in HCI on how technologies could create a different understanding of and relationship to the more-than-human world. It focuses on soil care practices, and how current (limited) capacities of digital sensing could be complemented with soil chromatography - a qualitative chemical test method for visually assessing soil health. The pictorial is based on a series of workshops conducted in an urban community farm. The discussion focuses on how interactive technologies may support the process of conducting and interpreting soil chromatography and what it means to study, care for, and design with the more-than-human.