Anicca Soil as Brain

Anicca: Soil as Brain is a large-scale living installation that forges an alliance between the intelligence of soil ecosystems bacteria, viruses and insects within that system and autonomous, AI‑driven robotics that amplify the soil and its inhabitants.

At its heart is a thriving terrarium in which soil, insects, and bacteria form a densely interconnected web of life. Milkback isopods and tiny springtails visible to the eye move through the substrate, aerating it, shaping its architecture, and triggering microscopic cycles of nutrient exchange and a rich acoustic environment.

The insects and microbes are more than passive inhabitants—they are active ecosystem engineers whose behaviors and micro‑movements become the brain of this living installation artwork.

Interlaced with this living matrix is a network of custom‑built autonomous robots, each equipped with a single antenna and embedded AI sensing systems. These machines listen, watch, and respond in real time to subtle shifts in the ecosystem while playing the sounds of insects commonly found within those environments.

The twitch of an isopod, a change in soil moisture, the presence of microbial metabolic cues—can trigger robotic movements, gestures, sound responses and some caretaking actions such as beckoning watering.

Isopods are such fascinating being to me. Females brood their young in a pouch under their thorax called the marsupium. The marsupium was a critical innovation that enabled isopods to become one of the most successful groups of crustaceans to colonize land. By carrying their developing eggs and young in a protected, fluid-filled pouch, isopods can: 

• Bypass the need for an external water source for their eggs to develop.
• Protect vulnerable eggs and young from external threats.
• Provide a regulated environment for the embryos to grow, compensating for environmental changes in temperature and oxygen availability. 

Additionally isopods have survived at least three of the Big Five mass extinctions:

• Permian–Triassic
• Triassic–Jurassic
• Cretaceous–Paleogene

This work is a microcosm of nested microbes, robotics and Insects carrying nested symbionts — bacteria living inside other bacteria within specialized host cells.

In this work the technological community may nourish a biological community.

In this way, Anicca becomes a proto-self‑regulating hybrid system—a kind of miniatured robotic/organic feedback loop between biology and technology creating stability and resilience.

Additionally Anicca; Soil as Brain is a sound installation with a droning soundtrack, integrated with insect sounds and robotic feedback.

The soundtrack will be playing constantly and the movements of the isopods and springtails will trigger insect sounds from the robots themselves, which will contribute to the overall sonic experience.

At times the robots will signal only with light as fireflies and at other times with movement all while listening and contributing to this soundtrack, which will with their contributions never be exactly the same.

Here, intelligence is not centralized but emerges from the interplay of all participants: soil microbes, insect inhabitants, robotic avatars, environmental conditions, and the code that mediates their relationships.

This is a form of distributed cognition—an extended mind that crosses the boundaries of biology and machine.

The installation embodies the Buddhist concept of anicca, the doctrine of impermanence.

Like all living systems, the terrarium is in a constant state of transformation: the soil composition shifts, microbial populations rise and fall, insect behaviors change, microbial succession proceeds and the robots also adapt in realtime in response to the overall environmental cues.

There is no final form—only a continuous becoming. This impermanence is not a flaw but the defining condition of life, a dynamic equilibrium that keeps the system alive. A place where dead matter is imbued with life and where computer robot avatars become extensions to the living isopod and springtails.

The robots movement is a reminder that the springtails and isopods are also constantly becoming.

Anicca: Soil as Brain also engages a deeper philosophical question: can technology itself be considered a form of life? We can easily say it has become an extension of life.

Astrophysicist Sara Imari Walker has argued that life should be understood not by its material composition, but by its informational and organizational complexity—a definition that would include self‑organizing, self‑regulating technological systems.

In this sense, the robots within Anicca are not merely tools or representations—they are active participants in a living network, co‑evolving with the biological world they inhabit.

By rendering the invisible visible—the micro-movements of insects, their sounds and signals, the hidden chemical rhythms of soil metabolism, the silent labors of microbes—Anicca reframes soil as a dynamic, thinking entity. It is an ecology where life and machine intertwine, merge, and adapt.

Ultimately, Anicca: Soil as Brain invites us to imagine technology not as separate from nature, but as a partner in the intelligence and evolution of the Earth itself.

Concept, production, design and soundtrack

Ken Rinaldo

Special Thanks

Trademark Gunderson for his MAX MSP and Jitter programming on this project, as well as the Anicca robots programming.
Devin Powell for his programming for two years on this project as it developed and implementing new sensors and actuators.
David King for hot popping the isopod, springtail and soil terrarium now housing the soil brain.
Gayle Van Marter for cold-working the isopod, springtail and soil terrarium now housing the soil brain.
Sonauto.com AI Generation of soundtrack and The Museum of Biological Diversity The Ohio State University for insect sounds remixed in Audacity.
Jon Zimmerman as student intern for one of the first truly working prototypes on this Anicca (At the time Cyclops Robot)
Joseph Richmond as intern programming and moving the project closer having suggested accelerometers to control the neck.
Danner Seyfer Sprauge for working with me on 3D modeling these visualizations and for this early massaging of the illustrator cut files for the bodies of Anicca robots.
Joshua Gagliardi for working with me on laser cutting early versions of this robot and creating 3D models allowing the springs to sit flush, with the pull string neck elements.
Zach Sanderson for Laser Cutting, The Department of Art SADR Digital Fabrication Lab Specialist for assistance with laser cutting versions of the bodies of Anicca.

Exhibitions

SP/N GALLERY                                                                                                                               Dallas, Texas, Feb 7-Apr, 2026
Organic Worlds: Symbiogenesis in Art presents the World wide premiere of Symbiogenesis, and Anicca Antennae-Soil as Brain; robotic beings, as avatars to insects, soil and bacteria as well as The Evolution of Information = Life, Organic Murmuration, SIGNS, The Farm Fountain, 3 Story Robots. Two person exhibition with Amy Youngs. Invited by Professor Dr Charissa Terranova.            

References:

Research References for Anicca: Soil as Brain

1. Soil as an Emergent Intelligent System
2. Nadell, C. D., Drescher, K., & Foster, K. R. (2016). Spatial structure, cooperation, and competition in biofilms. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 14(9), 589–600. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro.2016.84
3. Microbial Distributed Intelligence
4. Ben-Jacob, E., Shapiro, J. A., & Levine, H. (2004). Bacterial linguistic communication and social intelligence. Trends in Microbiology, 12(8), 366–372. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2004.06.006
5. Robots Powered by Microbes (EcoBot-II and EcoBot-III)
6. Ieropoulos, I., Melhuish, C., & Greenman, J. (2005). EcoBot-II: An artificial agent with a natural metabolism. International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, 2(4), 295–300. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5772/5777
7. EcoBot (Wikipedia overview) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoBot
8. MFC-Based Environmental Sensing in Robotics
9. Santoro, C., et al. (2021). Microbial Fuel Cell-Based Biosensors for Early Detection of Environmental Pollution. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 8, 558953. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2021.558953/full
10. Soil Microbial Fuel Cells for IoT and Agriculture
11. Bactery: Soil microbial fuel cells for powering IoT. Hello Future — Orange Innovation. https://hellofuture.orange.com/en/agtech-start-up-bactery-aims-to-use-soil-microbial-fuel-cells-to-power-iot/
12. Khaled, F., et al. (2023). Soil Microbial Fuel Cells for Sustainable Biosensing Applications. Biosensors, 13(1), 145. https://www.mdpi.com/2079-6374/13/1/145
13. Biodiversity and Stability in Soil Ecosystems
14. Wagg, C., et al. (2019). Fungal-bacterial diversity and microbiome complexity predict ecosystem functioning. eLife, 8, e62813. https://elifesciences.org/articles/62813
15. Self-Organization in Microbial Soil Communities
16. Ratzke, C., & Gore, J. (2018). Modifying and reacting to the environmental pH can drive bacterial interactions. PLoS Biology, 16(3), e2004248. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2004248

Researchers (Insect Bioacoustics + AI/ML)

• Kiskin, I., Sinka, M., Cobb, A. D., Rafique, W., Wang, L., Zilli, D., … Roberts, S. J. (2021). HumBugDB: A Large‑scale Acoustic Mosquito Dataset. (20 hours, 36 species of mosquito, acoustic recordings from multiple countries) oxlel.web.ox.ac.uk+5arXiv+5datasets-benchmarks-proceedings.neurips.cc+5
• Mind Foundry/Oxford team. (2022). HumBug: Detecting Mosquito Signatures with Machine Learning. Smartphone-based acoustic detection of mosquito species for malaria surveillance mindfoundry.ai+2oxlel.web.ox.ac.uk+2
• Supratak, A., et al. (2024). MosquitoSong+: A noise-robust deep learning model for mosquito species & sex identification from wingbeat sounds. PLOS ONE Zenodo+6PLOS+6ResearchGate+6
• Faiß, M., & Stowell, D. (2023). Adaptive Representations of Sound for Automatic Insect Recognition. PLOS Comput Biol. (uses LEAF vs. mel‑spectrogram frontends, up to 66 Orthoptera/Cicadidae species) GitHub+14PLOS+14arXiv+14
• Faiß, M. et al. (2025). Open datasets of insect sounds for bioacoustic ML (expands to 66 species, calls for larger collections) arXiv+2PLOS+2
• He, H., et al. (2024). Enhancing Insect Sound Classification Using Dual‑Frequency and Spectral Fusion Module (DFSM) MDPI
• Additional mention: Use of ML (e.g. XGBoost, RF, KNN, MFCC features) for classifying insects like cicadas, beetles, termites, crickets from sound recordings (2025 preprint) arXiv

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Artists Working with Insect Bioacoustics

• David Dunn – composer & environmental sound researcher; invented microphones to record bark beetle sounds inside trees; created CD The Sound of Light in Trees; collaborated with forest scientists on acoustic interventions musicalmrfox.co.uk+6Transart Institute for Creative Research+6University of California+6
• Robin Meier – installation Synchronicity (2015): alive fireflies & crickets are induced to flash/chirp in synchrony with pendulums, blending insect behavior with engineered systems vice.com+6robinmeier.net+6robinmeier.net+6
• Leah Barclay – ecoacoustic sound artist; projects like Biosphere Soundscapes (environmental listening in UNESCO biosphere reserves) and Rainforest Listening (AR layering rainforest soundscapes in urban space) soundcloud.com+5leahbarclay.com+5icareifyoulisten.com+5
• Jana Winderen – sound artist focusing on hard‑to‑access environments; works include hydrophone‑recorded underwater insects (Ultrafield), installations like The Art of Listening: Under Water and The River (Natural History Museum, London, 2024–25)