Department
Ice-Time will be realized as an immersive, multi-projection video and sound installation combining art and science that minutely examines the structure of ice and glaciers to reveal the time embedded within. The intention of this project is to convey the essence of ice and its intimations; to elicit the poetics contained within frozen water as revealed by current climate research. The Ice-Time installation will detail the cracks and bubbles and different forms that ice takes in ice cores, crystals, glaciers, and other natural ice formations. The images will occupy an architecture of translucent screens that layer in a faceting effect, merging into crystalline collages of shifting combinations as visitors move through. A three-dimensional soundscape will enlarge the image space, composed from the field recordings of sounds of ice, excerpts of interviews with researchers, and readings by actors of ice folklore and literature. By means of a vivid, material presence of image, sound, data, and time, the installation will imbue the spectator with a deep awareness of the environmental, spiritual, and culture implications of ice.
Research for Ice-Time is underway combining the methods of a naturalist in the field, collaboration with experts, and the collecting of scientific and cultural data. The Cryosphere, Earth’s frozen regions, is currently exhibiting the most visible indications of climate change. Direct experience with this environment is essential to the concept of Ice-Time. The project centers on an expedition to Western Greenland to the fastest moving glacier on Earth, Jakobshavn Isbræ, to document this moment in glacial space-time. Working directly with polar scientists on the ice and in the laboratory, Ice-Time engages with current research and its broader ramifications. The underlying causes, as well as the manifestations, of myriad forms of ice will be presented as an aesthetic experience to a broad and varied public.
Interdisciplinary Media Arts + Practice, School of Cinematic Arts (iMAP)
Emailclea.waite@usc.edu
Location
Los Angeles , California 90089
United StatesBio
Clea T. Waite is an intermedia artist, scholar, and experimental filmmaker whose artworks investigate the artifacts and poetics that emerge at the intersection of art and science. She creates somatic, cinematic works that engage with climate change, astronomy, particle physics, and popular culture via immersion and sensual interfaces – as well as one inter-species collaboration with several hundred tropical spiders. Currently completing her PhD at the University of Southern California in Media Arts + Practice, Waite combines a background in physics and computer graphics from the MIT Media Lab with her current research in cinema, media art, and critical theory, bringing a unique blend of expertise to her projects from which cross-disciplinary synergies emerge. Waite’s artworks have been exhibited and awarded internationally, notably the IBM Innovation Prize for Artistic Creation in Art and Technology, the GC3 at the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, and most recently the Open Sky Project for ICC Hong Kong. Waite’s fellowships include an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow, a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies Fellow, CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics artist in residence, and fellow at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Waite has previously held positions at the Academy of Film and Television Babelsberg, Pratt Institute, New York, and the University of the Arts, Berlin.
Science Specialties
art, computer modeling, education, history of scienceCurrent Research
The Ice-Time project is a creative response to the perilous state of Earth's ecosystem. Ice, like geology, is a primary indicator of the deep time of our planet’s environment. Ice is also the most visible indicator of the short-term effects of climate change. Glacial ice presents a four-dimensional hyper-view into time and space, an icy tesseract giving us an 800,000 years view backwards into Earth’s climatological past and forwards towards the pending outcomes of current rising temperatures.Ice-Time will be realized as an immersive, multi-projection video and sound installation combining art and science that minutely examines the structure of ice and glaciers to reveal the time embedded within. The intention of this project is to convey the essence of ice and its intimations; to elicit the poetics contained within frozen water as revealed by current climate research. The Ice-Time installation will detail the cracks and bubbles and different forms that ice takes in ice cores, crystals, glaciers, and other natural ice formations. The images will occupy an architecture of translucent screens that layer in a faceting effect, merging into crystalline collages of shifting combinations as visitors move through. A three-dimensional soundscape will enlarge the image space, composed from the field recordings of sounds of ice, excerpts of interviews with researchers, and readings by actors of ice folklore and literature. By means of a vivid, material presence of image, sound, data, and time, the installation will imbue the spectator with a deep awareness of the environmental, spiritual, and culture implications of ice.
Research for Ice-Time is underway combining the methods of a naturalist in the field, collaboration with experts, and the collecting of scientific and cultural data. The Cryosphere, Earth’s frozen regions, is currently exhibiting the most visible indications of climate change. Direct experience with this environment is essential to the concept of Ice-Time. The project centers on an expedition to Western Greenland to the fastest moving glacier on Earth, Jakobshavn Isbræ, to document this moment in glacial space-time. Working directly with polar scientists on the ice and in the laboratory, Ice-Time engages with current research and its broader ramifications. The underlying causes, as well as the manifestations, of myriad forms of ice will be presented as an aesthetic experience to a broad and varied public.