Works » By Title » C » Creatures of the Ice (4:46 / 2006)

Creatures of the Ice is a stylistic departure from Canadian soundscape composition in that it moves away even farther from reality than what Katharine Norman called a “real-world music.” While the latter allows abstract and imaginative sounds to enhance the experience of certain aspects of reality, this piece could be described, perhaps, as an "acoustic tall-tale in which an absolutely fantastic story is incorporated into the truthful bit. The work employs a recording of shards of ice rubbing against each other in the Arctic Ocean at Tasiujaq, Nunavut (courtesy of Katarina Soukup) organized in a spatial canon. The sounds are “smeared” by use of an automated ring modulation and a reverse-reverb effect, which creates intricate, constantly-changing phase relations, and, thus, unpredictable spatial positioning (the truthful bit). The recording was accomplished by using a tiny microphone placed underneath the ice in the colony of the ice-ants, who work arduously all winter long cracking ice (and jokes), flying around and arguing about productivity issues. Frequently the argument gets heated, voices are raised and shards of ice are being tossed all over in a counterclockwise motion (like the spin of the Arctic Circle). Honestly! “Have confidence in what I say, and pay honour to the tales of Munchausen.”