Soil-filled glass jars, copper and aluminum electrodes, wiring, mechanical clocks, custom circuitry
90″ × 120″ × 36″ (variable)

Existential Consciousness turns raw earth into a functioning electrical system. Soil, copper, and aluminum form a simple galvanic network whose charge animates an array of mechanical clocks. Time is literally driven by the conductivity of the ground beneath us.

The installation foregrounds the material bond between body and earth. The elemental composition of soil—oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen—is the same chemistry that forms human life. In this system, the soil not only sustains biology but also behaves as a circuit, generating a low, persistent current that becomes both medium and metaphor.

Each ticking clock marks more than mechanical duration; it resonates with the rhythm of planetary motion and human mortality. The work draws attention to our synchronization with the earth’s rotation, suggesting that timekeeping itself is an act of embodiment—a reflection of our attempt to measure existence through material means. It reminds us that timekeeping is a physical negotiation with gravity, decay, and renewal, proposing that our understanding of duration is inseparable from the very materials that make us.

Installation view: clock array driven by soil-powered circuitry

In this piece, technology and ecology fold into one another. The machine depends on the vitality of the soil, and the soil finds expression through the machine’s movement. Together, they model a fragile ecology of feedback: energy circulating, diminishing, regenerating.

Existential Consciousness imagines the earth as a vast, slow-moving circuit—an electrical body whose rhythms underwrite our own. The installation becomes a study in shared existence, where matter, time, and life are wired into the same continuous system.

The installation becomes a study in shared existence, where matter, time, and life are wired into the same continuous system.