Jana Winderen

Field trip to the North Pole and the Camp Barneo on the Sea Ice supported by the Mamont Foundation: https://www.foundation-mamont.com

SHIFT is an ongoing project based on actively listening to the pack ice around the North Pole, to discover and communicate to an audience the nature of this ice, the drift and movement of the ice and the life on, inside and under it. There are currently plans for oil drilling along the edge of the sea ice, and the opening up of the North East Passage. What will this mean for the ecosystems in the area?

21st April 2015, a trip to Camp Barneo and the Geographical North Pole supported by the Mamont Foundation: made recordings 15 metres under the ice with hydrophones. The sound of the moving ice could be discerned – a beautiful and intense sonic experience.

To walk on this drifting skin – this sea ice cooling the pole – is an intensely moving experience; by communicating this through sound compositions based on the recordings taken from the ice itself, should evoke concern, respect and curiosity.

By communicating with sound the realisation of a place, the different issues become more intense for the audience than if other media was used, for example photography or other image reproduction. This knowledge has been learned from playing concerts with sounds from Greenland and also from positive responses to Energy Field (released on compact disc by Touch in 2010), with compositions from the same territory. This release resulted in the Golden Nica prize at Ars Electronica in Austria in the same year.

Recording with hydrophones 15 and 10 meters under the Pack Ice. photo: Sergey Panteleev

The geographical North Pole on the 22 April 2015.