World Without Ice
June 3, 2022 — July 24, 2022
Musicians, composers and artists Michael Gould, Stephen Rush and Marion Tränkle have collaborated with climate scientist Henry Pollack (co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with IPCC colleagues and Al Gore) to create a multimedia installation that captures a precarious moment in the history of our planet. Part science, part music, part art, this collaboration is a groundbreaking, thought-provoking and compelling multisensory experience focusing on Earth’s changing climate.
The collaboration takes its inspiration from Henry Pollack’s book A World Without Ice. An original composition by Stephen Rush, with musical patterns and structure derived from a century of climate data, anchors the installation. An innovative ice-melt actuated instrument created by Michael Gould, comprising suspended ice domes melting drip-by-drip onto an array of differently tuned drums, complements Rush’s score. A film by Marion Tränkle blends beautiful photographs from both the Arctic and Antarctic by Pollack and his colleagues, to provide a gorgeous, slowly evolving large-scale visual envelope for the installation. The musical composition carries the listener through large leaps in temperature, the randomly dripping ice yields an eerily beautiful and natural companion sound, and the film provides a stunning visual immersion. The overall narrative of the imagery takes the viewer from a totality of ice, slowly evolving into landscapes of ice, land and water, eventually to reach an enveloping ocean that characterizes Earth without ice.
The exhibit creates a unique space in which visitors can contemplate Earth’s changing climate, and shape their own perspectives of this ongoing global transformation. No visitor leaves the installation unchanged.
