A Million Keys

Artist Katie Paterson uses the sound recordings of melting glaciers to document and bring attention to environmental devastation. For vatnajökull (the sound of) Paterson set up a hydrophone in the rapidly growing lagoon of the largest glacier in Europe, Vatnajökull.

image of the lagoon at Vatnajökull

The underwater microphone was then linked to an amplifier, which connected to a mobile phone. Callers were invited to listen to the glacier’s disintegration using a phone number mounted on the wall of the Slade Gallery.

phone number in gallery

While others have sucessfully used photography to raise awareness about global warming, audio incites an emotional response distinct to the medium. With this project, Paterson provided the glacier with a “voice” and thus animated it with identifiable human qualities. This reaction is futhered by the selection of a telephone as the means of tranmission.

Another project by Paterson, langjökull, snæfellsjökull, solheimajökull, repositions the glacial recordings as a performance.

The sounds of three melting glaciers were produced as three records, each with a loop at the end. The records were then cast and frozen with the actual meltwater from the glacier. For a duration of two hours, the records played simultaneously on separate turntables, until the ice completely dissolved. The sound emitted is a combination of the recorded sounds of the glaciers and the melting ice itself. The source event for the recordings is synchronously enacted and reenacted, making a tragic fact of climate change evident outside of its original site.