Touch, clay and landscape collide in new interactive installation for Somerset Art Weeks
Somerset Film’s Artist in Residence Edie Evans will unveil Soft Ground, a new interactive installation exploring landscape, access and material knowledge, as part of Somerset Art Weeks this September. Developed at The Engine Room with support from Somerset Film’s Creative Technologist, the work invites audiences to shape a digital landscape with their hands, using clay as the interface between body and technology.
In Soft Ground, visitors handle and move physical clay forms. Embedded sensors respond to touch, pressure and movement, triggering real-time changes to a projected landscape built from 3D scans of the local terrain. Sound shifts alongside the image, forming an evolving soundscape. The result is a feedback loop between hand and land: touching the earth changes what the room sees and hears.
Evans, a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture and installation, developed the piece from a practice rooted in walking, gathering and direct material engagement. As a disabled and neurodivergent artist, she works through tactile, sensory-led processes, and access sits at the centre of this project. Soft Ground offers multiple ways into the work — touch, spatial sound and responsive visuals — reducing reliance on sight alone and opening the piece to different sensory and cognitive ways of encountering it.
“Soft Ground positions digital technology as an access tool,” says Evans, “creating a responsive system where environment is not passively observed but actively encountered through touch, sound and interaction.”
The installation continues Evans’ ongoing exploration of clay, land and the body, building on recent projects including Salt and Clay, made on the Dorset coast, and Earth Notes, an evolving research project into sustainable, hand-built ceramics. It also marks a new direction in her practice, extending her material-led work into digital tools including 3D scanning, projection and responsive sound and image systems.
Soft Ground will be presented at Somerset Film at The Engine Room during Somerset Art Weeks, 21 September to 2 October 2026.
Somerset Film at The Engine Room 50 High Street, Bridgwater, TA6 3BL
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