Two Hundred Fifty Glaciers, is the first piece from my new album, Vanishing Places Vol. 2 Glaciers In Iceland, one of the three commissioned pieces I made for CHANGE, a permanent art exhibit dedicated to examining and expressing response to vulnerable polar geographies.
The album’s worth of music that I made for the installation, incorporates field recordings I made in Iceland, data sonification, pedal steel, electric guitar and tapes.
This piece contains the same number of notes as the number of remaining glaciers in Iceland (two hundred fifty). I limited the harmonic content of the piece to thirteen pitches, each pitch representing one of the thirteen largest glaciers in Iceland. Simple and mutually compatible clusters of notes were recorded to four loops, then played back at different speeds. The thirteen pitches re-combine throughout the piece to form new clusters of notes in an evolving soundscape.
I began by making field recordings in Iceland, then asked for help from glaciologist Oddur Sigurðsson to establish some parameters for the piece. My goals leading up to this project were to expand on some concepts from Vanishing Places Vol. 1 Bears Ears, and to attempt to tie certain aspects of the recording and composition process to the geography of Iceland.
I’ll share more details soon, but this is a project I am very excited to be a part of. Installation on the Endurance will take place in February, 2020 and is scheduled to depart April 2, 2020 out of Svalbard, Norway.
