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JF: How did your desire to develop extrasensory perception evolve and lead you to have seismic implants for your project Seismic Sense?
MR: My childhood best friend Neil Harbisson started doing this project at Dartington College of Arts where we realised that there was another way to use technology.
We used to be very hippy, and at that time in my life I was actually very anti-technology. I found it very cold and distant and unnecessary. It wasn’t very natural. Then by changing our way of seeing technology, we realised that it didn’t have to be just a tool in a practical way, but it could be more sensory. We saw that through technology, we could perceive reality in another way. This actually really changed my perception.
So Neil started to experiment with colour and then I also wanted to experiment with movement in other ways. There are many things that move around us that we don’t perceive – not only humans move. I realised I needed technology to help me to reach perceptions of movement or movement from other points of view.
And then I started doing different projects. In 2007, I started doing recordings of the speeds of people walking in front of me using a speed sensor I had on the back of my body. This was very experimental – well, everything is very experimental! But then there was a point I remember where I didn’t want my sense of movement to be dependent on other people, because I was thinking that not only humans move, there are many things that move.
And then I had this idea that if I was alone on the planet, how could I perceive movement? What is movement without humans? And then I realised that not only the Earth is constantly moving – not only rotating by itself, but it shakes constantly through earthquakes and seismic activity. And this idea really excited me. I was like, wow! Imagine being connected to this huge and natural movement, maybe the most prehistoric movement that exists. It can be dramatic and colossal, but at the same time it is largely unknown, one of the most imperceptible movements that is constantly in the background.
And it really fulfilled my desire to be connected to something natural on the Earth itself, that was moving. So that’s when I started to develop Seismic Sense, the sense of being connected to the seismic activity of the planet.
These ideas come sometimes as a process of elimination, to have an experience and then move on, think about other things. II think you have to go through all the other experiences in order to have the other idea. So it’s through the experience that you keep evolving.
JF: Activating your seismic sense through technology feels like an awakening of a dormant sense, that has become extrasensory but that at an earlier stage of our evolution we might have had precognition of seismic activity in the way that animals still do. When you had the seismic implants removed, I understand you experienced phantom tremors. Did these correlate with any seismic data?
MR: I need the technology because I’m already in this century, I think this sense if we had it was lost a long time ago. I wish I could, I wish I didn’t need technology anymore, but I’m not that awake. Maybe if someone else would try it, maybe with different people, it would have a different effect.
The sense of the earthquakes – happens very, very often. So when I had this phantom effect, sometimes it was a coincidence. I mean, it happened at the same time as earthquakes, but because there’s so many, it would be hard to see the correlation, that would be a whole other study. It lasted three months and lessened over time, so my awareness changed and I’m not sure if it was because I really felt it.
I had the implants for almost seven years, but I felt that I wanted something different. Also, I was going through a period of time where everything was changing and I wanted something radical, a radical change. The most radical thing I thought was to take the implants out, but I was scared to take them out, because they had become a part of me and I thought that everything would change. Who am I without the influence?
I was very shaken. And then I remembered the moment when I took them out. It was like everything will change now, but then nothing changed because for a while I could still feel the vibrations.
JF: There is an emerging trend of hyper-humanism, the desire not to transcend the human state but to enhance the existing matrix largely through biohacking. In consciousness studies, there is a practice of accessing hyper-human skill sets, such as precognition and remote viewing through the experience of being out-of-body or lucid dreaming, and integrating these abilities into waking/physical reality. Do you see potential for other senses and skills being hacked through technology?
MR: We wanted to do that also with sensing north, but it didn’t work very well. We did this experiment with Neil, Manuel and I, where we went back to a festival and then as we did a performance, we put a little compass on the backs of our knees so we could sense where the doors were, to see if the compass could awaken our sense of orientation.
JF: Maybe it’s almost like Pavlov’s dog, it needs repetition and intensity? If you got a little electric shock every time you faced north, eventually after time, maybe you would just be programmed to anticipate that with north. Although you would want to avoid being traumatised by the north, that wouldn’t be a good life hack.
MR: Yeah, we didn’t try it for long. Maybe it has to be more radical. Pain is interesting. Neils has the compass implanted in his knees so he is in for the long term.
JF: What was the sensation like with the earthquakes?
MR: It was physically a very, very subtle vibration, very small. And it also evolved. First it was in my wrist, then my arms, then my feet. Also because of this experience, when I put it on my feet, I wondered why I didn’t think about that before.
At the beginning it was a bit stressful and very distracting. Every time I experienced it, I was in shock about how many earthquakes there were. I’m from Barcelona, near Barcelona, so my relationship with earthquakes was extremely unknown. I guess it was like something that happened and that I didn't have any experience at all, and I was in shock about how many earthquakes there are. I was like, wow, so we live in a way that really has no notion of how our planet moves a lot.
So I wondered why they built San Francisco! Why are people still living there? It’s so dangerous, actually. We are the ones who haven’t learned how to live on our own planet, because we’ve been ignoring that our planet moves and it has always been moving. We’ve been ignoring that it’s a living organism and that it evolves. So that’s why, like with cyborg art, I feel like we are explorers, rediscovering our own planet by perceiving it in another way. If you perceive things in another way, then you also learn how it is and learn to understand it better.
It is also exciting for me, but in the beginning it was very distracting, and I learned that not every time there’s a big earthquake, something bad happens. So all this stereotype or imagination broke away. I realised there are many, many big earthquakes, like really big ones, but it’s actually extremely rare that something bad happens. So I had to change my idea of earthquakes always bringing tragedy. Even though sometimes it’s hard, because when something bad happens, I feel like I’m promoting this and it’s such a weird feeling.
JF: The last few years I’ve lived in Greece and Mexico, in places where there are many fault lines and I became accustomed to feeling regular tremors. Now in the UK, when I am above the underground and a tube passes underneath my feet, or a large lorry drives by a building I am in, the first sensation is that it is an earthquake, before I remember where I am. Like a muscle memory. How was your nervous system during the time you had the implants? Do you feel you were under stress, experiencing a state of background low-level anxiety?
MR: Yeah, at the beginning I was. But it didn’t last that long because I got used to it because it was pretty constant.
I remember once I was in the streets in the summer, and I just felt like a big one happened. I was like, Neil, there’s been a big earthquake! But I went home to look at the news and then I saw that nothing had happened, and then I kind of cooled down, because I realised most of them are not catastrophic.
So it lasted for a bit, but then I kind of got used to it little by little. At the end of the year, I just felt it maybe more when I was relaxed at home, when I was more aware of the seismicity. If I was busy, I didn’t even notice it. That’s because I was really integrated. Sometimes, when you’re silent, you’re more aware of what you can hear, but when you’re busy, you don’t hear anything.
It was a bit like this at the end, but through time, it felt like I was adding a new beat inside my body. Apart from having my heartbeat, I felt I was hearing the earthbeat, having its own rhythm inside me. I also recently had a baby, almost a year ago. And we did a project on that, in which the baby’s heartbeat was monitored and sent to my partner, so that he could experience the pregnancy and we became a trinity. Being pregnant, I felt like I had another beat in me. So maybe all my senses are adding beats. He had his own heartbeat also inside me, and then the Earth.
JF: This makes me think of the Schumann resonance, which some call the heartbeat of the earth and then how studies show the impact of solar flares - we could say from the heart of the sun, the corona - on this earth resonance and also on the human heart.
MR: Wow. That makes sense, but I never thought about it. How often are there solar flares?
JF: Regularly but with varying intensity. It seems like they are generally on an upward trend though.
MR: And when it increases, people are altered?
JF: People tend to feel quite anxious. They can have insomnia. There have been studies on the increase in heart conditions and cardiac arrest during peak moments.
MR: I will look into it as now I need to know about it, especially looking at all the animals that still have the senses we forgot about, how this is impacting them and us.
At the beginning of my project, people were very sceptical. Because their knowledge and use of technology has to be very functional, they asked me, but why are you doing this? Is it to save people from earthquakes? For me, I just like to feel the movement, but some people were very sceptical about using technology for anything that wasn’t very practical. I think now because we are using it everywhere and more people are using technology in experimental ways, people are more open to using it for other reasons than functional only.
I remember doing a talk to some businessmen in Dubai interested in tech and people were like, a big earthquake just happened, so how do you feel now? Why when it was a tragedy are you celebrating with dance? I think they thought of dance as being something you only do when you celebrate, but I don’t dance to celebrate – it’s an expression, an extension of me. It’s an invitation to the audience to stop their daily life and spend a bit of time focusing on becoming more aware of the point of view of the Earth under our feet and listening to another being, just to be aware of the planet moving. For me, it’s an invitation to look into another way or to have a perspective of not moving, just being still and listening to the Earth for some time.
This thing of predicting earthquakes is a great big mystery. Scientists have been trying to do this for many years. When people think that what I am doing is predicting earthquakes, I have to tell them, no I can’t predict them. I wish I could, but it’s like I am just sensing them at the same time a seismograph senses it.
Perhaps we can look at other species and get inspired by other animals, or learn from how other species have lived here. Because it’s been said that animals react before there’s a big earthquake happening because they are more sensitive and they can feel the tremors underneath the earth. So it's like maybe we should look at how they do it.
JF: Yes it would seem that their subtle sensory perception has a much wider bandwidth than ours. There have been reports of activity up to 10 days before major earthquakes, but on average the window is still quite small.
MR: That brief window is important also. It’s not that animals predict that on the seventh of September there will be an earthquake, but even if they feel it, I don’t know, maybe 10 minutes ahead, it can be helpful too.
In my artwork, much of what I've been trying to do is to move away from everything being so human-centred – like we are the centre of everything. It's always this way. We are just a part of the planet, just a little part. There’s many different ways of leading, many ways of perceiving, many ways of moving, of existing. So in my artwork what I try to do is include other living creatures and other ways of living, of moving – I treat the planet itself as a choreographer, as a composer. I am just a channel to interpret it. This is one of my aims.
JF: Yes there is so much anthropocentric expectation – the idea that if we’re going to do this, what are we going to get out of it? What’s the benefit for us? Rather than finding ways to become more sensitive, integrated and co-creative with other species.
MR: I remember some years ago the debate was about how we can make machines better, make them more human. Well, humans have been a terrible species! We are horrible to all the other species. So maybe it would be better for the machines to be less human. Why not see that to be more human is something that is not good?
As cyborgs, we sometimes don’t relate much to transhumanism because it means being a part of such a big group and everyone has their own saying. Sometimes the aim is to make humans better in a hierarchical sense. We like to detach from that idea of being better than, because maybe even being able to sense earthquakes is not something that makes you better. Maybe it makes you worse because then you go crazy? Even the concept of better or worse is very subjective. While we do want to encourage humans to have all the sensory experiences, maybe they’re not better or worse. It’s not about making the species better, it’s just having another experience that is not related to any sense you have that you are better or worse, because then if someone doesn't see what you see, it doesn’t mean that he’s worth less. We define ourselves more like a trans-species because we like to be on the same level with other species.
And then we also consider that we have one organ that in a sense is no longer defined as a human sense – it’s usually from another species. So it’s more equal to or takes into consideration other species.
JF: I think this idea of shared sense, of shared experience with other species is crucial to a future that looks more like Donna Hathway’s making kin in the Chthulucene.
MR: It’s like a connection, I guess, even with the people who felt it very far from me that I didn’t have any connection with before. It makes you interconnected. And yes, it changes your perception. I feel these senses, apart from having a different experience, helped me to understand it better, to have a deeper connection. It creates more empathy, more understanding – like when you have a relation with your dog, you wouldn’t treat it badly because you have a connection and affection, and it gives you more empathy if you have a deeper connection relation to something.
JF: How did you structure the performance of Seismic Sense? How would you prepare yourself?
MR: The input to the implants was global seismic data, from all over, because I think I see it as a unit, the planet. For me, it’s more like when I perform now, I also usually describe that. So I am awaiting in these performances for data to come through from anywhere.
It’s a bit like meditation. I imagine that I go down, down into the earth and I also have these images that really help me. I imagine that I have like roots under my feet that go all over the planet, and through these roots, I also imagine what's why for me like the earth breathing.
And earthquakes, seismic duty, it’s like the breath of the planet – you know, it's like a big breath. A breath is like a big earthquake. Something I imagine like the earth breathing.
JF: There’s an equation for that. That’s what Rudolph Steiner did. So if you count the average number of breaths per day of a human, it corresponds to the movement of the earth.
MR: Really?
JF: He describes it as a platonic year, the time it takes for all the planets and fixed stars to complete a cycle and return to the starting points – 25,920 years. We see a synchronicity between the rhythm of the earth and our own. With each breath, we mimic the cycles of the cosmos. Each day we take a grand cosmic breath. On average, a human being breathes 18 times a minute, which may vary depending on your age. It’s 18 breaths a minute. We thus renew our life rhythmically 18 times a minute. And in one day, so in one hour, this would be equal to 18 times 60, which is 1080. And in 24 hours, 1080 times 24 is 25,920 times.
MR: Wow I’m going to try that out.
JF: You also created soundscapes in Seismic Percussion, did you ever digitally sonify the seismic data?
MR: Yes in the beginning. I looked for real earthquakes, and then whenever I did concerts, I was putting the sound of the earthquakes whenever we were playing. So I didn’t sonify the data but I used the real sound of the earth.
What I do with the percussion is that I create seismic scores. And I create scores based on seismic data that has happened in a specific place. The first one I did was in Mexico, because I performed there for the first time. So I researched all the seismic data that had happened in the last 50 years in Mexico. And I put it all together in a score for some different intensities. And then I reinterpreted this data through the drum.
And I have many scores, I have the Mediterranean Sea, Mexico and many other countries. Lithuania was the quietest country. It was just like one earthquake and nothing. I think that was the quietest score that I have.
JF: Since removing the implants, you continue to perform Seismic Sense using haptics, how do these function?
MR: I am working with jewellery, a bracelet that behaves like the implants. Then there is the Seismic Suit. This is cloth that reacts every time there is some seismic activity. The system is called Soft Robotics – and the material we are using is like silicone. But now we want to try with other materials. Then there’s tubes with a little pump of air that is connected to a board that has WiFi, so every time there’s sensitivity, it sends a reaction to the pump and it creates air. And then it inflates.
I love the idea of making these living things – that it reacts to something that’s very uncontrollable for humans. It’s just like the Earth. I like this.
JF: I love the visual reference of the inflation, that the audience can have a direct experience without interpretation.
MR: Exactly. They can really experience it outside of me. And now I want to go one step further. I think my next work in progress for the earthquakes will be in a museum in Taiwan, if it works. And then I’m also working on a show, a stage piece, but it actually will be on the street. That one I’m doing with my partner, Quim Girón, too.
Actually one of the aims of this piece is to invite people to become cyborgs for a while, and we are going to put them underground. It’s about the relationship that we have with the Earth underground, the underland we have under our feet.
We are going to put frontal lights to the audience and give them some bracelets that vibrate every time there’s some seismic activity, so people will actually be able to feel the earthquakes. We want them to feel what they would feel in their skins now, so the bracelets replace the implants.This way the audience can feel it in their body and see with me whenever there is an earthquake. They will feel the vibration. That shared experience is taking it to another level, more immersive. I’m looking forward to that.
JF: What other collaborations are you and Quim working on?
MR: We actually met working on a project together. With us, the aim is to share a sense, because he’s a contemporary circus artist and he also makes shows and performances. Our aim was to do new scenes together on senses that we can then be explained on stage.
We wanted to do something related to the sea and the water, because we are so close to the water and our planet is mainly ocean and water and it’s so unknown. And I really liked it. We actually took our boat sailing licence during the pandemic, so we were on the sea all the time.
Then in the middle of it, I got pregnant. So then we did this with communal sense and what I had was like a bell with an ultrasound sensor with a transformer, something that transforms the sound when connected to a phone. And then my partner had a phone with bone-conducted headphones, so he could literally call our baby with this. In the beginning when he called, it was with the amniotic fluids, and he said it was like water inside, like a proper river.
And then when the baby was growing, the heartbeat was more present, and he could hear the heartbeat of our baby. So we said he shared the pregnancy because he was actually digitally pregnant when I was biologically pregnant. He was pregnant through the audio.
And then we did some what we called Cyborg Family Concerts. We just had two shows because we just had nine months to do them. We put the heartbeat of the baby into a loudspeaker and then we also combined it with our own heartbeats. And then we created music using our bodies as instruments. So our baby was already a DJ in the belly!
JF: I feel that that is something that many people would appreciate, any partner that is not biologically pregnant and in the case of surrogates. Do you think it could be something that many people could have the experience of?
MR: Yes, lots of parents – fathers especially – were very moved by the experience. And for me it was also nice to be able to share this experience because when you’re pregnant a lot of women feel alone or like it’s something very personal.
And about this learning about animals too. I mean, for me, this was the most radical experience I had. When I was pregnant, I was like the Venus Cyborgist! But I don’t know, it’s nothing compared to this. And also, once again, it was strange the way people said that they really related to me.
I felt so ridiculous as a human, because my goal was actually to learn how to be an animal. When you give birth, it’s like how animals live. So humans have to relearn how to give birth – not because of course that is something we can do, but because we built all these systems and all these cultures, we forgot about it. And now it’s like we have to relearn how to give birth.
JF: It’s like another primal sense, which is otherwise switched off, but becomes activated for that moment.
MR: I remember reading a book where the author said she was the daughter of a farmer and it is like she learned to give birth through the father because the father was helping cows or other animals to give birth, rather than in the hospital.
It’s like things like breastfeeding, for example, where it is forbidden to see this in some places. But for my baby to survive, I have to breastfeed him – it’s the main food for the baby. We have to hide this away because it has become something sexual. It doesn’t make sense at all. Otherwise how can he survive? He has rights, you know, as a baby, to get food. It’s not something to have fun. It’s crazy what we have done to this!
JF: The womb, the moon, the amniotic fluid and an ocean of stars, this leads us onto your project, Moonquakes.
MR: There seismic activity on the moon is not because of the tectonic plates, but for other reasons because I think for different types of seismic activity for the contrast of heat and cold metals, gravity and something else.
The thing is that the first time they went to the moon, they put the seismograph because this is usually what happens when a new place is discover. I couldn‘t do the data in real time because I couldn’t find it, even if the moonquakes are happening in real time and recorded somewhere. I did however find some records of the moonquakes from 1971, so I used that.
I did some performances about feeling the past with the drum, and then when I did the moonquakes, I did the Earth with the drum and then the moonquakes with the gong. Because usually the moonquakes are less frequent, but they can last a very long time – like a whole day maybe, whereas earthquakes are very short. It’s interesting. And now, the ones that are registered are recorded in a physical assessment graph on the moon.
Actually last week, Neil met an artist who works a lot with ice and the North Pole, and she invited us to create something related to ice on the North Pole. So now we’ll have to investigate ice, about ice quakes, I guess. Ice quakes are related to the moon because of the gravitational pull that makes the fluid. So I’ll have to investigate that.
Image: Seismic Suit by Carlos Montilla → @carlosmontilla_
JF: How did your desire to develop extrasensory perception evolve and lead you to have seismic implants for your project Seismic Sense?
MR: My childhood best friend Neil Harbisson started doing this project at Dartington College of Arts where we realised that there was another way to use technology.
We used to be very hippy, and at that time in my life I was actually very anti-technology. I found it very cold and distant and unnecessary. It wasn’t very natural. Then by changing our way of seeing technology, we realised that it didn’t have to be just a tool in a practical way, but it could be more sensory. We saw that through technology, we could perceive reality in another way. This actually really changed my perception.
So Neil started to experiment with colour and then I also wanted to experiment with movement in other ways. There are many things that move around us that we don’t perceive – not only humans move. I realised I needed technology to help me to reach perceptions of movement or movement from other points of view.
And then I started doing different projects. In 2007, I started doing recordings of the speeds of people walking in front of me using a speed sensor I had on the back of my body. This was very experimental – well, everything is very experimental! But then there was a point I remember where I didn’t want my sense of movement to be dependent on other people, because I was thinking that not only humans move, there are many things that move.
And then I had this idea that if I was alone on the planet, how could I perceive movement? What is movement without humans? And then I realised that not only the Earth is constantly moving – not only rotating by itself, but it shakes constantly through earthquakes and seismic activity. And this idea really excited me. I was like, wow! Imagine being connected to this huge and natural movement, maybe the most prehistoric movement that exists. It can be dramatic and colossal, but at the same time it is largely unknown, one of the most imperceptible movements that is constantly in the background.
And it really fulfilled my desire to be connected to something natural on the Earth itself, that was moving. So that’s when I started to develop Seismic Sense, the sense of being connected to the seismic activity of the planet.
These ideas come sometimes as a process of elimination, to have an experience and then move on, think about other things. II think you have to go through all the other experiences in order to have the other idea. So it’s through the experience that you keep evolving.
JF: Activating your seismic sense through technology feels like an awakening of a dormant sense, that has become extrasensory but that at an earlier stage of our evolution we might have had precognition of seismic activity in the way that animals still do. When you had the seismic implants removed, I understand you experienced phantom tremors. Did these correlate with any seismic data?
MR: I need the technology because I’m already in this century, I think this sense if we had it was lost a long time ago. I wish I could, I wish I didn’t need technology anymore, but I’m not that awake. Maybe if someone else would try it, maybe with different people, it would have a different effect.
The sense of the earthquakes – happens very, very often. So when I had this phantom effect, sometimes it was a coincidence. I mean, it happened at the same time as earthquakes, but because there’s so many, it would be hard to see the correlation, that would be a whole other study. It lasted three months and lessened over time, so my awareness changed and I’m not sure if it was because I really felt it.
I had the implants for almost seven years, but I felt that I wanted something different. Also, I was going through a period of time where everything was changing and I wanted something radical, a radical change. The most radical thing I thought was to take the implants out, but I was scared to take them out, because they had become a part of me and I thought that everything would change. Who am I without the influence?
I was very shaken. And then I remembered the moment when I took them out. It was like everything will change now, but then nothing changed because for a while I could still feel the vibrations.
JF: There is an emerging trend of hyper-humanism, the desire not to transcend the human state but to enhance the existing matrix largely through biohacking. In consciousness studies, there is a practice of accessing hyper-human skill sets, such as precognition and remote viewing through the experience of being out-of-body or lucid dreaming, and integrating these abilities into waking/physical reality. Do you see potential for other senses and skills being hacked through technology?
MR: We wanted to do that also with sensing north, but it didn’t work very well. We did this experiment with Neil, Manuel and I, where we went back to a festival and then as we did a performance, we put a little compass on the backs of our knees so we could sense where the doors were, to see if the compass could awaken our sense of orientation.
JF: Maybe it’s almost like Pavlov’s dog, it needs repetition and intensity? If you got a little electric shock every time you faced north, eventually after time, maybe you would just be programmed to anticipate that with north. Although you would want to avoid being traumatised by the north, that wouldn’t be a good life hack.
MR: Yeah, we didn’t try it for long. Maybe it has to be more radical. Pain is interesting. Neils has the compass implanted in his knees so he is in for the long term.
JF: What was the sensation like with the earthquakes?
MR: It was physically a very, very subtle vibration, very small. And it also evolved. First it was in my wrist, then my arms, then my feet. Also because of this experience, when I put it on my feet, I wondered why I didn’t think about that before.
At the beginning it was a bit stressful and very distracting. Every time I experienced it, I was in shock about how many earthquakes there were. I’m from Barcelona, near Barcelona, so my relationship with earthquakes was extremely unknown. I guess it was like something that happened and that I didn't have any experience at all, and I was in shock about how many earthquakes there are. I was like, wow, so we live in a way that really has no notion of how our planet moves a lot.
So I wondered why they built San Francisco! Why are people still living there? It’s so dangerous, actually. We are the ones who haven’t learned how to live on our own planet, because we’ve been ignoring that our planet moves and it has always been moving. We’ve been ignoring that it’s a living organism and that it evolves. So that’s why, like with cyborg art, I feel like we are explorers, rediscovering our own planet by perceiving it in another way. If you perceive things in another way, then you also learn how it is and learn to understand it better.
It is also exciting for me, but in the beginning it was very distracting, and I learned that not every time there’s a big earthquake, something bad happens. So all this stereotype or imagination broke away. I realised there are many, many big earthquakes, like really big ones, but it’s actually extremely rare that something bad happens. So I had to change my idea of earthquakes always bringing tragedy. Even though sometimes it’s hard, because when something bad happens, I feel like I’m promoting this and it’s such a weird feeling.
JF: The last few years I’ve lived in Greece and Mexico, in places where there are many fault lines and I became accustomed to feeling regular tremors. Now in the UK, when I am above the underground and a tube passes underneath my feet, or a large lorry drives by a building I am in, the first sensation is that it is an earthquake, before I remember where I am. Like a muscle memory. How was your nervous system during the time you had the implants? Do you feel you were under stress, experiencing a state of background low-level anxiety?
MR: Yeah, at the beginning I was. But it didn’t last that long because I got used to it because it was pretty constant.
I remember once I was in the streets in the summer, and I just felt like a big one happened. I was like, Neil, there’s been a big earthquake! But I went home to look at the news and then I saw that nothing had happened, and then I kind of cooled down, because I realised most of them are not catastrophic.
So it lasted for a bit, but then I kind of got used to it little by little. At the end of the year, I just felt it maybe more when I was relaxed at home, when I was more aware of the seismicity. If I was busy, I didn’t even notice it. That’s because I was really integrated. Sometimes, when you’re silent, you’re more aware of what you can hear, but when you’re busy, you don’t hear anything.
It was a bit like this at the end, but through time, it felt like I was adding a new beat inside my body. Apart from having my heartbeat, I felt I was hearing the earthbeat, having its own rhythm inside me. I also recently had a baby, almost a year ago. And we did a project on that, in which the baby’s heartbeat was monitored and sent to my partner, so that he could experience the pregnancy and we became a trinity. Being pregnant, I felt like I had another beat in me. So maybe all my senses are adding beats. He had his own heartbeat also inside me, and then the Earth.
JF: This makes me think of the Schumann resonance, which some call the heartbeat of the earth and then how studies show the impact of solar flares - we could say from the heart of the sun, the corona - on this earth resonance and also on the human heart.
MR: Wow. That makes sense, but I never thought about it. How often are there solar flares?
JF: Regularly but with varying intensity. It seems like they are generally on an upward trend though.
MR: And when it increases, people are altered?
JF: People tend to feel quite anxious. They can have insomnia. There have been studies on the increase in heart conditions and cardiac arrest during peak moments.
MR: I will look into it as now I need to know about it, especially looking at all the animals that still have the senses we forgot about, how this is impacting them and us.
At the beginning of my project, people were very sceptical. Because their knowledge and use of technology has to be very functional, they asked me, but why are you doing this? Is it to save people from earthquakes? For me, I just like to feel the movement, but some people were very sceptical about using technology for anything that wasn’t very practical. I think now because we are using it everywhere and more people are using technology in experimental ways, people are more open to using it for other reasons than functional only.
I remember doing a talk to some businessmen in Dubai interested in tech and people were like, a big earthquake just happened, so how do you feel now? Why when it was a tragedy are you celebrating with dance? I think they thought of dance as being something you only do when you celebrate, but I don’t dance to celebrate – it’s an expression, an extension of me. It’s an invitation to the audience to stop their daily life and spend a bit of time focusing on becoming more aware of the point of view of the Earth under our feet and listening to another being, just to be aware of the planet moving. For me, it’s an invitation to look into another way or to have a perspective of not moving, just being still and listening to the Earth for some time.
This thing of predicting earthquakes is a great big mystery. Scientists have been trying to do this for many years. When people think that what I am doing is predicting earthquakes, I have to tell them, no I can’t predict them. I wish I could, but it’s like I am just sensing them at the same time a seismograph senses it.
Perhaps we can look at other species and get inspired by other animals, or learn from how other species have lived here. Because it’s been said that animals react before there’s a big earthquake happening because they are more sensitive and they can feel the tremors underneath the earth. So it's like maybe we should look at how they do it.
JF: Yes it would seem that their subtle sensory perception has a much wider bandwidth than ours. There have been reports of activity up to 10 days before major earthquakes, but on average the window is still quite small.
MR: That brief window is important also. It’s not that animals predict that on the seventh of September there will be an earthquake, but even if they feel it, I don’t know, maybe 10 minutes ahead, it can be helpful too.
In my artwork, much of what I've been trying to do is to move away from everything being so human-centred – like we are the centre of everything. It's always this way. We are just a part of the planet, just a little part. There’s many different ways of leading, many ways of perceiving, many ways of moving, of existing. So in my artwork what I try to do is include other living creatures and other ways of living, of moving – I treat the planet itself as a choreographer, as a composer. I am just a channel to interpret it. This is one of my aims.
JF: Yes there is so much anthropocentric expectation – the idea that if we’re going to do this, what are we going to get out of it? What’s the benefit for us? Rather than finding ways to become more sensitive, integrated and co-creative with other species.
MR: I remember some years ago the debate was about how we can make machines better, make them more human. Well, humans have been a terrible species! We are horrible to all the other species. So maybe it would be better for the machines to be less human. Why not see that to be more human is something that is not good?
As cyborgs, we sometimes don’t relate much to transhumanism because it means being a part of such a big group and everyone has their own saying. Sometimes the aim is to make humans better in a hierarchical sense. We like to detach from that idea of being better than, because maybe even being able to sense earthquakes is not something that makes you better. Maybe it makes you worse because then you go crazy? Even the concept of better or worse is very subjective. While we do want to encourage humans to have all the sensory experiences, maybe they’re not better or worse. It’s not about making the species better, it’s just having another experience that is not related to any sense you have that you are better or worse, because then if someone doesn't see what you see, it doesn’t mean that he’s worth less. We define ourselves more like a trans-species because we like to be on the same level with other species.
And then we also consider that we have one organ that in a sense is no longer defined as a human sense – it’s usually from another species. So it’s more equal to or takes into consideration other species.
JF: I think this idea of shared sense, of shared experience with other species is crucial to a future that looks more like Donna Hathway’s making kin in the Chthulucene.
MR: It’s like a connection, I guess, even with the people who felt it very far from me that I didn’t have any connection with before. It makes you interconnected. And yes, it changes your perception. I feel these senses, apart from having a different experience, helped me to understand it better, to have a deeper connection. It creates more empathy, more understanding – like when you have a relation with your dog, you wouldn’t treat it badly because you have a connection and affection, and it gives you more empathy if you have a deeper connection relation to something.
JF: How did you structure the performance of Seismic Sense? How would you prepare yourself?
MR: The input to the implants was global seismic data, from all over, because I think I see it as a unit, the planet. For me, it’s more like when I perform now, I also usually describe that. So I am awaiting in these performances for data to come through from anywhere.
It’s a bit like meditation. I imagine that I go down, down into the earth and I also have these images that really help me. I imagine that I have like roots under my feet that go all over the planet, and through these roots, I also imagine what's why for me like the earth breathing.
And earthquakes, seismic duty, it’s like the breath of the planet – you know, it's like a big breath. A breath is like a big earthquake. Something I imagine like the earth breathing.
JF: There’s an equation for that. That’s what Rudolph Steiner did. So if you count the average number of breaths per day of a human, it corresponds to the movement of the earth.
MR: Really?
JF: He describes it as a platonic year, the time it takes for all the planets and fixed stars to complete a cycle and return to the starting points – 25,920 years. We see a synchronicity between the rhythm of the earth and our own. With each breath, we mimic the cycles of the cosmos. Each day we take a grand cosmic breath. On average, a human being breathes 18 times a minute, which may vary depending on your age. It’s 18 breaths a minute. We thus renew our life rhythmically 18 times a minute. And in one day, so in one hour, this would be equal to 18 times 60, which is 1080. And in 24 hours, 1080 times 24 is 25,920 times.
MR: Wow I’m going to try that out.
JF: You also created soundscapes in Seismic Percussion, did you ever digitally sonify the seismic data?
MR: Yes in the beginning. I looked for real earthquakes, and then whenever I did concerts, I was putting the sound of the earthquakes whenever we were playing. So I didn’t sonify the data but I used the real sound of the earth.
What I do with the percussion is that I create seismic scores. And I create scores based on seismic data that has happened in a specific place. The first one I did was in Mexico, because I performed there for the first time. So I researched all the seismic data that had happened in the last 50 years in Mexico. And I put it all together in a score for some different intensities. And then I reinterpreted this data through the drum.
And I have many scores, I have the Mediterranean Sea, Mexico and many other countries. Lithuania was the quietest country. It was just like one earthquake and nothing. I think that was the quietest score that I have.
JF: Since removing the implants, you continue to perform Seismic Sense using haptics, how do these function?
MR: I am working with jewellery, a bracelet that behaves like the implants. Then there is the Seismic Suit. This is cloth that reacts every time there is some seismic activity. The system is called Soft Robotics – and the material we are using is like silicone. But now we want to try with other materials. Then there’s tubes with a little pump of air that is connected to a board that has WiFi, so every time there’s sensitivity, it sends a reaction to the pump and it creates air. And then it inflates.
I love the idea of making these living things – that it reacts to something that’s very uncontrollable for humans. It’s just like the Earth. I like this.
JF: I love the visual reference of the inflation, that the audience can have a direct experience without interpretation.
MR: Exactly. They can really experience it outside of me. And now I want to go one step further. I think my next work in progress for the earthquakes will be in a museum in Taiwan, if it works. And then I’m also working on a show, a stage piece, but it actually will be on the street. That one I’m doing with my partner, Quim Girón, too.
Actually one of the aims of this piece is to invite people to become cyborgs for a while, and we are going to put them underground. It’s about the relationship that we have with the Earth underground, the underland we have under our feet.
We are going to put frontal lights to the audience and give them some bracelets that vibrate every time there’s some seismic activity, so people will actually be able to feel the earthquakes. We want them to feel what they would feel in their skins now, so the bracelets replace the implants.This way the audience can feel it in their body and see with me whenever there is an earthquake. They will feel the vibration. That shared experience is taking it to another level, more immersive. I’m looking forward to that.
JF: What other collaborations are you and Quim working on?
MR: We actually met working on a project together. With us, the aim is to share a sense, because he’s a contemporary circus artist and he also makes shows and performances. Our aim was to do new scenes together on senses that we can then be explained on stage.
We wanted to do something related to the sea and the water, because we are so close to the water and our planet is mainly ocean and water and it’s so unknown. And I really liked it. We actually took our boat sailing licence during the pandemic, so we were on the sea all the time.
Then in the middle of it, I got pregnant. So then we did this with communal sense and what I had was like a bell with an ultrasound sensor with a transformer, something that transforms the sound when connected to a phone. And then my partner had a phone with bone-conducted headphones, so he could literally call our baby with this. In the beginning when he called, it was with the amniotic fluids, and he said it was like water inside, like a proper river.
And then when the baby was growing, the heartbeat was more present, and he could hear the heartbeat of our baby. So we said he shared the pregnancy because he was actually digitally pregnant when I was biologically pregnant. He was pregnant through the audio.
And then we did some what we called Cyborg Family Concerts. We just had two shows because we just had nine months to do them. We put the heartbeat of the baby into a loudspeaker and then we also combined it with our own heartbeats. And then we created music using our bodies as instruments. So our baby was already a DJ in the belly!
JF: I feel that that is something that many people would appreciate, any partner that is not biologically pregnant and in the case of surrogates. Do you think it could be something that many people could have the experience of?
MR: Yes, lots of parents – fathers especially – were very moved by the experience. And for me it was also nice to be able to share this experience because when you’re pregnant a lot of women feel alone or like it’s something very personal.
And about this learning about animals too. I mean, for me, this was the most radical experience I had. When I was pregnant, I was like the Venus Cyborgist! But I don’t know, it’s nothing compared to this. And also, once again, it was strange the way people said that they really related to me.
I felt so ridiculous as a human, because my goal was actually to learn how to be an animal. When you give birth, it’s like how animals live. So humans have to relearn how to give birth – not because of course that is something we can do, but because we built all these systems and all these cultures, we forgot about it. And now it’s like we have to relearn how to give birth.
JF: It’s like another primal sense, which is otherwise switched off, but becomes activated for that moment.
MR: I remember reading a book where the author said she was the daughter of a farmer and it is like she learned to give birth through the father because the father was helping cows or other animals to give birth, rather than in the hospital.
It’s like things like breastfeeding, for example, where it is forbidden to see this in some places. But for my baby to survive, I have to breastfeed him – it’s the main food for the baby. We have to hide this away because it has become something sexual. It doesn’t make sense at all. Otherwise how can he survive? He has rights, you know, as a baby, to get food. It’s not something to have fun. It’s crazy what we have done to this!
JF: The womb, the moon, the amniotic fluid and an ocean of stars, this leads us onto your project, Moonquakes.
MR: There seismic activity on the moon is not because of the tectonic plates, but for other reasons because I think for different types of seismic activity for the contrast of heat and cold metals, gravity and something else.
The thing is that the first time they went to the moon, they put the seismograph because this is usually what happens when a new place is discover. I couldn‘t do the data in real time because I couldn’t find it, even if the moonquakes are happening in real time and recorded somewhere. I did however find some records of the moonquakes from 1971, so I used that.
I did some performances about feeling the past with the drum, and then when I did the moonquakes, I did the Earth with the drum and then the moonquakes with the gong. Because usually the moonquakes are less frequent, but they can last a very long time – like a whole day maybe, whereas earthquakes are very short. It’s interesting. And now, the ones that are registered are recorded in a physical assessment graph on the moon.
Actually last week, Neil met an artist who works a lot with ice and the North Pole, and she invited us to create something related to ice on the North Pole. So now we’ll have to investigate ice, about ice quakes, I guess. Ice quakes are related to the moon because of the gravitational pull that makes the fluid. So I’ll have to investigate that.
Image: Seismic Suit by Carlos Montilla → @carlosmontilla_