Description

Geological traces of the Anthropocene are chicken bones🦴 and footprints🐾 of the soles of sneakers. As an alternative to the dominant approaches in the field of modern environmental management, namely the extraction and exploitation of natural resources, we would like to propose a more careful approach to the relationship with the earth’s surface at the micro-level of the soil horizon, associated with the personal contribution of each individual. The main element of the human-soil communication interface (or soil-sole) is the reliefs and dents left by the surface of the soles of our shoes. In this project, we propose various configurations of shoe soles obtained with methods of machine learning and analysis.

We have studied the data of different soil samples. Next, we analyzed the properties of density, flowability, and rock hygroscopicity. Further, by setting target parameters based on these data, by machine learning of the neural network on datasets of sole patterns used in forensic science, we generate the optimal and most favorable sole designs for a given area of the sole shape, which could carry the recreational potential, prevent erosion, weathering or swamping of the area of application.

Artist Talk on Ars Electronica