In 2017 Kat went to Nunavut in the Arctic on a residency with Friends of Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, to carry out artistic research into the reaction of ice and water to the climate crisis through sound. It was for this residency that Kat developed circuit bent instruments from scientific equipment usually used to measure chemical and physical properties of water, like temperature and acidity. Kat used these to listen to the process of measurement, as a comment on not only the rapidly changing Arctic environment, but also the datafication of human relations to environmental catastrophe.

The resulting work, The Matter of the Soul, has been featured on the BBC and performed around the globe including at COP24 in 2018 as part of the Greenpeace ClimateHub in Katowice.

Kat has gone on to apply these instruments to many other environments and ecosystems, including Lausitz for This Land Is Not Mine and liminal landscapes as part of my compositions for Mapping Gender.

She will be presenting this work on 31st August as part of the Sounding Elements convened by Samuel Hertz, Sasha Englemann and Indira Lemouci at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference.