A Phenomenology of Iceberg Collisions
Immersive sound; digital cinema
Above: 10m semi-circular wall, 6-channel spatial sound, 3-channel panoramic video. Commissioned by the 15th Gwangju Biennale under the theme “Pansori : A Soundscape of the 21st Century”. Sponsored by the the Canadian Council for the Arts & the Institut français. Curated by Nicolas Bourriad, Jade Barget, and Kuralai Abdukhalikova. 2024.The B15 Iceberg Score based on the seismological data. Published in the Visual Anthropology Review.
Data: Douglas MacAyeal
Notation: Jessia Feldman
Transcript: Saadia Mirza
DESCRIPTION:
A spatial sound installation of the calving of the world’s largest iceberg, called the B15. Using seismic data captured by glaciologists it invites an audience to listen to the mysterious world that cracks, shears, slides and trembles deep beneath glaciers and ice sheets. This work is under production through dialogues and conversations with Douglas MacAyeal and Julien Chaput. The data was captured by geophysicist Douglas MacAyeal in the year 2000, in a historic moment when the B15 fractured from the Ross Ice Shelf and drifted away into the sea. The vibrations and resonance in the data help understand previous fracturing events as well as predict future ones.The sounds in this installation are of almost 2 years of data compressed into 10 minutes of sound.
In addition to mixing, post-processing and composing these sounds, the work includes a visual and cinematic experience using radar data of the ice sheet, depicting the physics of the B15’s calving, shearing, sliding and trembling, in sync with the sound. In reference to the work of experimental composer and film theorist Michel Chion, this installation is a synchretic work, in which sound and image create meaningful audiovisual combinations in simultaneity.
Special thanks to geophysicists Douglas MacAyeal, Julien Chaput, and Rick Aster whose brilliant scientific research led to this work, and to sound artist Antoni Raijekov for mixing some of the sounds.
