Like Electronic Techno Music: The Accelerating Rhythms of Collapsing Cryospheric Auralities

Rachel  Hill

doi:10.25038/am.v0i25.446

Authors

Rachel Hill

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i25.446

Keywords:

Cryosphere, Ice, Sound Art, Auralities, Ecopoetics

Abstract

With its mutating cracks, bleeps, and booms, the contemporary cryosphere speaks in accelerating volumes. A number of contemporary artists transform these sounds of collapsing, disappearing ice into broadcastable frequencies. Rather than a remote distance beyond the reach of relevance, these artworks translate the effects of Antarctica’s melting ice into galvanizing sonic affects. These strange sonics make the pre-existing, myriad connections between ice shelves and human selves apparent. This essay surveys the work of artists Andrea Polli, Adrian Wood (in collaboration with glaciologist Grant MacDonald), Luftwerk, and Himali Singh Soin, in order to think through a phenomenon which I call ‘collapsing cryospheric auralities’. More than purely doom-laden dictatics, these sonic artworks strive to propagate hope in equal measure: gestating new trajectories and other futures beyond the seemingly intractable impasses of the present.

Article received: April 20, 2021; Article accepted: June 21, 2021; Published online: September 15, 2021; Original scholarly paper

Author Biography

Rachel Hill

Science and Technology Studies Department, University College London
United Kingdom

Rachel Hill will begin her Ph.D. studies in the Science and Technology department of University College London in October 2021, with a fully-funded studentship from the London Arts and Humanities platform (LAHP). She recently completed her MA in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she wrote her dissertation on the contemporary sociotechnical imaginaries of outer space in the commercial space sector. She is a co-director of the London Science Fiction Research Community (LSFRC) and explores the radical potential of speculative fiction as a member of the feminist research collective Beyond Gender. She regularly speaks in various conferences and workshops on the intersection of astronomy, STS, ecopoetics, imaginaries, and visualities.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i25.446 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i25.446