here

CONTENTS
04 Preface by Brian Greene
06 Foreword by Ross A. Virginia
08 IntroDUCTION by Paul D. Miller
14 THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
16 Sonic Landscape
18 TERRA NOVA Q&A with Glasberg/Miller
28 Data Landscape
48 TIMELINE OF ANTARCTICA
56 Posters and Stickers
82 Economic Landscape
92 Emotional Landscape
122 AFROFUTURISM Q&A with van Veen/Miller
126 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
127 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
2
3
When you think of the term “ice” there are so many connotations that
come to mind: surface tension, temperature, the opacity of the material,
the basic sense that it can transform between liquid and solid. It’s elusive
because it can become so many things. People use ice for almost every
purpose—they make houses out of it, use it in their drinks, land airplanes
on it, and if you happen to be in Finland, they make musical instruments
out of it.
Paul D.
Miller
What sphinx of cement and
aluminum hacked open their
skulls and ate up their
imagination?... Moloch whose
buildings are judgement!
–Allen Ginsberg, “Howl!”
What I have done with this book is unpack some of the issues that drive
my artwork and its relationship to the constantly changing facets of
contemporary life in our information-economy dominated, post-everything
twenty-first century. Looking back over the last several centuries, an
intense amount of energy has been expended all over the world exploring
and unraveling the meaning of humanity’s condition on the planet. Much
of this energy has been spent in perverse and self-defeating ways. Our
vision of modern life is tinged by events like the Deepwater Horizon oil
spill, which makes former disasters like the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident or
the 1986 release of radioactive steam in Chernobyl seem quaint and
self-contained. More than ever, we are interconnected, and interdependent. In the future, regardless of any human action, the planet will be
here—we, as a species, might not.
If you look back at “ice” in English, you see it’s derived from the Old
English term “is” that in itself is derived from what most consider to be
proto-Germanic “isaz.” There are runes for it. There are symbols for it.
There is poetry for it. It’s considered one of the most mysterious materials,
yet in some parts of the world it’s simply part of the landscape.
According to most sources in physics, there are fifteen known crystalline
phases of water. Ice can exist on other planets in radically different forms,
and if you really want to go “macro,” you realize that hydrogen is one of
the basic substances of the universe. It’s that “meta.”
Let’s put it this way: as a naturally occurring material, ice is a crystalline inorganic solid with what scientists like to call an “ordered structure.”
It’s considered a mineral. Although it is based on the molecule of water,
which in itself is made of a single oxygen atom linked and covalently
bonded to two hydrogen atoms; many of the main qualities of ice are controlled by the hydrogen bonds between oxygen and hydrogen atoms. Got
it? It’s the only known non-metallic substance to expand when it freezes.
It is less dense than water, which means that ice floats on the surface
of any body of water. Light reflecting from ice looks blue because ice
absorbs more of the red frequencies of light than the blue ones, so icebergs containing a lot of impurities (algae, rock sediments, air bubbles,
etc.) appear grey, brown, or green. Ice’s basic structure is hexagonal.
Amusingly enough, scientists are still uncertain about what exactly makes
ice slippery. From glaciers to pack ice, from icebergs to the undulating
surface of what the scientific community likes to call the “cryosphere,”
ice is an incredibly important part of the global climate, particularly with
regard to the water cycle, the basic foundations of life on the planet as
we know it. Most scientists would agree that the human body is made of
about ninety-two percent water. When we look at ice, we’re looking at a
reflection of mortality, of the body made solid and inarticulate. One could
8
9
SONIC LANDSCAPE
The Canadian composer, educator, and environmental activist R. Murray
Schafer is perhaps best known for his use of the term “soundscape.”
For him it implied a connection between how sounds evolve in acoustic
space and how human perception connects the sonic phenomena around
the observer. I am interested in the connection between graphic design
components like the “soundscape” and how we can perform a composition.
Turntables, and now any digital playback device, create sound fields, or
personal sonic spaces. This is a visual exploration of that phenomenon.
In 1969, Schafer also coined the term “schizophonia.” He used it to describe
the phenomenon of splitting a sound from its source or the condition
caused by this division from the natural to the artificial representation of
a sound from its origin—this is the essence of sampling. Schafer wrote:
“We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been
torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent
existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head
but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape.” This section explores
this theme through visual sampling.
16
17
Terra Nova as performed at Multiplicidade in Brazil, November 30, 2010. Courtesy of Rodrigo Torres.
26
Terra Nova as performed at Multiplicidade in Brazil, November 30, 2010. Top: courtesy of Rodrigo Torres; bottom: courtesy of Diana Sandes.
27
40
41
September, 1519
Circa 350 BC
The Ancient Greeks first come up with
the idea of Antarctica. They know about
the Arctic—named Arktos (the Bear)—
from the constellation the Great Bear
and decide that for order and symmetry
to balance the world, there should be
a similar cold southern landmass that
was the same but the opposite: “AntArktos” simply means “opposite the
Bear.” The Greeks conceptualized the
term, but they never actually went to
either the Arctic or Antarctic.
Circa 330 BC
Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek merchant,
geographer, and explorer, navigates
the coast of Britain and the waters
north of Scotland. He describes an
island six days sailing north of Britain
and names it “Thule.” This could refer to
Iceland, but it could also have been the
coast of the Shetland or Faroe Islands,
or Norway. Pytheas is the first person
to record a description of the midnight
sun, the aurora, and polar ice.
1409
1578
Francis Drake passes through the
Straits of Magellan. He finds himself
blown significantly southward due to a
tremendous storm in the Pacific. This
event proves that Tierra del Fuego was
separated from any southern continent.
The resulting discovery comes to be
known as the “Drake Passage.”
1592
Sailing on the Desire, Englishman John
Davis discovers the Falkland Islands.
The crew is forced to eat over 14,000
penguins, which they killed for food in
order to survive the winter. Stored as
properly as possible, upon reaching the
tropics the penguin meat spoils—only
sixteen of the original crew of seventysix reach home.
50
Antonio de la Roché is blown south of
Cape Horn giving him the first sighting
of South Georgia.
1739
Jean-Baptiste Bouvet de Lozier discovers the island Bouvet. Due to significant ice packs, the island is not sighted
again until 1808—the first landing does
not take place until 1822.
1722
Yves Joseph de Kerguélen-Trémarec
discovers the Îles Kerguélen.
1750
Antarctica receives its first literary
treatment in The Life and Adventures
of Peter Wilkins, a Cornish Man: Relating Particularly his Shipwreck near the
South Pole by Robert Paltock.
1764
John Harrison’s H-4 is adapted as the
standard for the creation of longitude,
which standardizes navigation based
on measurement of time as it unfolds
in increments. This leads to a revolution in how human beings measure the
planet, and standardizes how space
and time are measured.
1775
1819
Captain Cook sails past South Georgia
on his third Antarctic voyage, and discovers the South Sandwich Islands two
weeks later.
Englishman William Smith discovers
the South Shetland Islands, claims
them for Great Britain.
Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen
is the second explorer, after Cook, to
complete a circumnavigation of Antarctica. In the process, he returns to the
Antarctic waters and discovers the Alexander Islands and Peter I Island.
1776–1779
On his final voyage of exploration,
James Cook sails on the ships Discovery and Resolution along the west
American coast and up to Bering Strait
as far as 70°41’N with the hope of
finding the Northwest Passage. There
he encounters ice that stretches as far
as he can see. It’s an essential demonstration of the separation of the
Asian and American continents. On his
way home from this voyage, he died in
Hawaii during a failed attempt to
recover one of the Discovery’s boats
that had been stolen by the natives.
1820
The Royal Navy sends Edward Bransfield, with William Smith as pilot, to
search the waters southeast of the
newly claimed South Shetlands. As a
result, it is believed that he was the
first person to see the Antarctic Peninsula.
January 27, 1820
Russian Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen becomes the first person to
see the Antarctic continent.
February, 1821
John Davis, an American sealer from
Connecticut, arguably becomes the
first person to land on the continent.
Davis had been searching the South
Shetlands for seals.
1821
Along with British sealer George Powell, Nathaniel Palmer discovers the
South Orkney Islands.
1823
Englishman James Weddell sails to
74 degrees south. This is the farthest
1787
Ernst Chladni publishes Entdeckungen
über die Theorie des Klanges (Discoveries in the Theory of Sound), which
establishes sound as a series of waveform patterns. This helps create a new
field of science, acoustics, or how
sound travels through space.
1790
AR
CU
RR
E NT
WEDDELL
GYRE
ROSS
GYRE
The sealing industry commences on
South Georgia. Because the Europeans are involved in a continent-wide
war, the sealers are primarily from New
England.
PO
1817
Mary Shelley writes Frankenstein; or,
The Modern Prometheus, a story set in
the Arctic that strikes the tone for the
rise of several innovations in English
literature for the next two centuries,
and embeds a narrative of polar exploration at the heart of early Modernism.
L
T
ON
A major motive for the exploration of
the Arctic was the relentless economic
competition and the quest for additional trade and commerce and the desire
of European states to find alternate
trading routes to China, in the form of
1675
January, 1821
In search of new sealing grounds, Australian Frederick Hasselborough discovers Macquarie Island.
FR
1594–1610
Johannes Kepler publishes A New
Year’s Gift: or On The Six Cornered
Snowflake, a mathematical treatise
on why snowflakes form a hexagonal structure based on algorithmic
analysis of how snowflakes are unique
manifestations of a formula. Each
snowflake is an expression of mathematics implicit in the foundations of
nature.
1810
Captain James Cook and his crew become the first men to cross the Antarctic Circle.
AR
A revolution in oceanic navigation occurs when Ptolemy’s Geographia is
translated into Latin, thus introducing
the concepts of latitude and longitude
to Western Europe. This allows for long
distance sailing, and the creation of
more precise methods of charting the
positions of ships over immense expanses of the ocean.
Ferdinand Magellan sails from Spain in
search of a westerly route to the Indies.
Navigating down the coast of South
America, he discovers the narrow strait
passing through to the Pacific Ocean
that today bears his name. Further
south lies Tierra del Fuego, which the
early geographers assumed to be the
edge of the southern continent, representing the edge of the world as they
knew it.
1611
1773
EN
The Treaty of Tordesillas is signed by
Portugal and Spain, dividing the known
world defined by the Atlantic Ocean
between the two powerful kingdoms.
Pope Alexander, VI presides over the
division, with Spain taking the west
and Portugal the east. Antarctica is not
mentioned. The rest of Europe does
not recognize the treaty.
either a Northwest Passage along the
coast of North America, or a Northeast
Passage along the coast of Siberia. A
similar impulse leads to further exploration in the southern hemisphere.
ANTARCTIC CI RCU M PO
L
June 7, 1494
A NT
ARCTIC CI RC
U
SU
Ocean currents around Antarctica.
51
NT
BAR
CTIC FRO
M POLAR
CU
RR
T
58
59
READ
80
Y
E
AY E R
A DY
81
90
91
106
107
110
111
120
121