In collaboration with Baraga Studio

DROPS is a data visualisation and sonification piece – a composition in time, about the disappearance of our most valuable natural element – ice.

The installation visualises and sonifies the melting of ice in time through years, months, days. The composition that visualises drops as a metaphor of melting ice transforms rapidly as we move towards the present moment- clearly reminding us of its urgency.

Research data shows that every second 3 millions of tons of ice melt into the sea. This amounts to 259 200 000 000 tons of water per day. Between 1992 and 2017, Antarctica has lost 2658G tons of continental ice which contributed (in less than 30 years) to increasing of the sea level by 7 mm. Nearly 75% of this transformation happened in the last decade. Drops is a new audiovisual installation that features the natural phenomenon of glacier melting. Ice melting and global warming alongside the rise of the sea level and phenomenon of diminishing of plant and animal life is the core topic addressed by digitally programmed data visualisation and sonification which resembles water dropping. In the audiovisual installation each additional drop signifies raise of the sea level for 0,1 mm, so as the composition progresses in time in the end it culminates in the noise of 74 drops (corresponding to the raise of 7,38mm of sea level).

The number of drops in the digital environment follows the data set evolution based on satellite observation, where a new virtual drop (with its own sound frequency) is added to the simulation each time the quantity of melting ice has contributed to ocean increase by 0,1 mm comparatively to its average during the period 1980-1990. It results in demonstrating augmentation and acceleration of ice melting through the featured period (1992-2017).

The dataset is used from IMBIE, a collaboration between scientists supported by the ESA (European Space Agency) and the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and achieved through combination of ice sheet imbalance estimates developed from the independent satellite techniques of altimetry, gravimetry and the input-output method.

About Imbie: http://imbie.org/