BRANCHING CHRONOLOGIES
MEDIASCAPES FALL 2010
IAN SCHOPA
THE FRAMEWORK
"The problem is not how to discern a peak from the background noise, but to read a sentence out of the mass of gathered peaks" Bruno Latour, Laboratory Life
This investigation explores the accumulation of 800,000 years of weather over Antarctica. The data guiding the project indicates how the ice sheet, a structure larger in area than the US and at places more than a mile deep, is built up over time. This data (including CO2 and temperature indicators) is read from ice cores extracted from the sheet, their resolution always shifting over time with the amount of annual snowfall. Deeper into the ice the layers thin and annual layers become indistinguishable. There is some speculation that major structural shifts (Heinrich events) have occurred a number of times over the recorded history of the ice. A further description of these occurrences:
"During such events, armadas of icebergs broke off from glaciers and traversed the North Atlantic. The icebergs contained rock mass eroded by the glaciers, and as they melted, this matter was dropped onto the sea floor as "ice rafted debris". Scientists drilling through marine sediments can distinguish six distinct events in cores of mud retrieved from the sea floor, which are labelled H1-H6 going back in time; there is some evidence that H3 and H6 differ from other events."
Not only is the categorization of events in question - the causes are also disputed. Speculated causes of the events range from more local activity in the West Antarctic area of the ice sheet to disruptions in the distant Laurentide Ice Sheet in Canada, and even to solar cycles which describe eccentricities in the Earth's orbit around the sun.
Working from four sources - the solar cycles and data describing the composition of three ice cores taken from different locations in the geography - the intention is to chart correlations and ruptures in the chronology of the data and moreover, to explore how the intensity of the scientific gaze can influence past discoveries.
THE ANIMATION
"[The] main program in the laboratory is to reconstruct substances whose structure has already been determined and to evaluate their activity"
The juxtaposition of the construction and reconstruction of the ice core data forms the structure of the animation. Two sequences run in parallel - the first depicts the data viewed through a disinterested lens. The story unfolds linearly - the occurrence of events is not immediately identifiable, rather, the structure is pre-determined and cycles are indistinguishable from one another. The second sequence plays out from multiple perspectives. Latour, in his observation of scientific constructions, asserts "we do not attempt to produce a precise chronology of events in the field nor to determine what really happened". There is a sense of disorientation in the animation - past and future are difficult to distinguish - awareness of time and time-keeping are de-emphasized. The destabilization of the sequence could be further described by Hawking, who imagines a scenario where "each observer would have his own measure of time as recorded by a clock that he carried: clocks carried by different observers would not necessarily agree". The observers also carry their own speculations of when an event occurs. At a certain point, a "sudden crystallization of ideas" occurs - the space becomes "readable".
THE OBJECT
"an object was thus conceived through the superimposition of several statements in such a way that all the statements were seen to relate to something beyond the readers / authors subjectivity" - the event space as an imaginary construction
"objects appear because of the constant process of sorting - not everything is equally probable"
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Mediascapes 2010 Jacob Aboudou, Ice Laboratory mov.mp4by slapboxe214 views
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boy212941 7 months ago