On August 15th, 2017, I stood on deck of an old Norwegian fishing boat, owned by a dear friend, gazing at Tunabreen - a glacier in Templefjord, Svalbard. In silence my gaze fought between noticing the intricacies of cracks and crevices and the vast expanse of this wall of ice. I could not even begin to describe to you all that I thought, saw, felt, and heard as I stood there. And now as I look at that image, that I made in an attempt to capture all of that, it falls short. Very short.
In an attempt to translate this image into a record that can be experienced by somebody that has not had the opportunity to stand in front of a glacier I borrowed the idea of Ice Core sampling from science and turned this image into a musical score.
In science the method of ice core sampling drills a cylinder of ice from a glacier. This cylinder, like an archive of events, enables scientists to read it and glean information of glacial-interglacial cycles, changing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and climate stability from the past.
