British artist installs phone link to dying glacier

Reuters ^ | Fri Jun 8, 2007 | Avril Ormsby

[Daffynition]

LONDON, June 8 (Reuters Life!) - The creaking and splashing sounds of Europe's largest glacier slipping into an ocean grave are just a phone call away now that an artist has installed a microphone in its surrounding waters.

Glaswegian artist Katie Paterson was moved to set up the line after hallucinating about Iceland's giant Vatnajokull glacier during a bout of fever.

The link encourages people to connect emotionally with the glacier, she told Reuters from her tent on the Icelandic shoreline.

"It is really poetic: a river of ice slowly disintegrating, quite discreetly, quite invisibly. Sheets of ice are constantly slipping off, huge bits cracking, moving very slowly.

"It is sad to see a vanishing world."

Paterson, a final year student at Slade School of Art in London, decided to use the phone line after fever-induced hallucinations during a previous trip to Iceland.

The 25-year-old imagined that the liters of water she drank during recovery were making her feel part of the nearby glacier which supplied the water.

Climate change is having a damaging affect on Vatnajokull but the project is more about the glacier's grandeur slipping away, she said.

With the help of sponsors, Virgin Mobile and Dolphinear, Paterson was able to drop a hydrophone into the icy lagoon where the glacier is disappearing and pick up the sounds.

The waterproof microphone is linked to a phone and amplifier housed in a tent on land.

The work, entitled "Vatnajokull (the sound of)", will continue until June 13.

Only one caller at a time can get through, which was deliberate so people can have a "one-to-one beautiful and intimate moment" with the glacier, she said.

Calls to the number, 07758 225698, are charged at international rates.

[Daffynition]

If she keeps melting that glacial water and refreezing it ...it would become a colossal oscillating redundancy.

[Winniesboy]

I don't share the rather puritan responses to this on this thread. This is actually a rather neat idea - not particularly profound, but nice. I've spent a good deal of time on and around glaciers, and it's true the sounds they make are extraordinary, quite unlike anything else. I don't see why this shouldn't be shared: and enjoying this doesn't mean you're buying into any quasi-political sub-text, any more than enjoying those "whale music" records means you're buying into an anthropomorphic myth about whales. You can just enjoy it for what it is.

[aruanan]

British artist installs phone link to dying glacier

Glaciers don't die because they're not alive. They only recede, advance, or stay somewhere in between. The use of "dying" and "icy ocean grave" is an example of anthropomorphism.

[Nailbiter]

Can you spare $50, to listen to a dying Glacier

[JLAF]

You can listen to it at this link. They recorded 60 seconds of it.

http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=8659197#8659197

[Daffynition]

Thank you!

I've heard the glaciers' song and hiked them too, yep ... that's what they sound like.