Moss Pit is an experimental audio-visual project which works to engage people with moss, specifically peat moss, in new and exciting ways. The name is a play on the concept of mosh pits, where collective, often chaotic and disjointed, movement to music results in a singular entity: an ecosystem.

For this project, recordings of moss (and mossy landscapes) had been taken in various ways, including field recordings and the use of sensors that pick up texture, moisture, and bioelectric impulses. Musical compositions are also created that are inspired by moss, and which incorporate these recordings variably to create a flowing sound journey that is co-created with the moss.

This project was piloted at IMMA Earth Rising festival in 2023, where we held an installation based in a tent, created a multi-sensory space which immersed the audience in the moss, and gave people silent disco headphones which played the Moss Pit audio to take them on a sonic journey, encouraging them to react in their own ways to the sound and mimic a varied mossy landscape, or indeed a mosh pit.

We are working to develop this further, funding allowing, to take it to new venues and spaces as well as to allow people to experience Moss Pit at home. We want to see iterations of Moss Pit at club nights, on radio broadcasts, even out on the bog itself!