Decoding Secrets From White Giants is an immersive installation that attempts to find common ground between glaciers and electronic media art. In this exhibition, I use digital video and other media to transmit a message that has to be decoded. Glaciers store information about the planet’s past climate within their layers of ice accumulated throughout thousands of years. The smallest element where such information is stored is in the ice crystals that compose glaciers. Computers, on the other hand, store information and they represent the digital age. The Binary Code is the root for computer language, just like ice crystals are the roots of glaciers. By means of Binary Code, Decoding Secrets From White Giants has a message about glaciers in the digital age, that is presented in a way that resambles Morse code. This is, long images represent the number 1 and short images (images that start fading out as they appear) represent the number 0.
Every symbol, either a letter, a number, or any other symbol, such as %, is represented in binary code by a series of eight digits (0s and 1s). Thus in the video every letter, number or symbol is represented by eight images from one video clip. For every symbol I use a different video clip that was recorded during the different trips to the same glacier (Saint Mary's Glacier) in a period of six months. To separate between every symbol, there is a one (1) second break of black video with no audio. Every eight images there is a break, since eight images (0s and 1s) represent one symbol. Then, after every word represented by a series of images, there is a space of three (3) seconds.
During the show, which is a 2-channel video installation, every projector will shoot one message (sentence) at a time, so that the viewer has a chance to take notes (write 0s and 1s) as s/he sees them, to decode the message presented. Then the next message will be presented by the other projector.
Objective
The objective of this project is to raise awareness of the accelerated disintegration of glaciers and to show their incredible beauty. Arapahoe glacier, for example, was once considered the biggest glacier of Colorado and today is almost gone, and the same applies to Saint Mary's Glacier. When I first came to Colorado I had the opportunity to see this glacier first hand, and what I saw made me realize that glaciers in the state of Colorado, just like every glacier around the world, is melting away and with them, our reserves of fresh water. Global warming, although many people still think it is simply a natural cycle of the planet, is a real problem that we have to affront because it is being magnified by our reliance on fossil fuels as the major way to generate energy. We all hear about remote glaciers and the endangered species that inhabit such biospheres, yet we do not realize that some of those glaciers, although not readily accessible to everyone, are not that far away, and precisely those glaciers are perhaps the most vulnerable due to their lower latitude in relation to those in the poles or Alaska. The footage for “Decoding Secrets from White Giants” was gathered in Saint Mary’s Glacier. Some sources say that this is not a glacier because it does not flow. During the months I worked on this “snow field”, I happen to follow the rapid flow of a tree trunk that some how happened to emerge to the surface at certain point, and during the following weeks it ended almost at the bottom of the “snow field”. Later, once the snow around it melted away, it was fascinating to see how much volume of ice was lost, since the trunk lays among some rocks, several feet over the surface of the snow.
Glaciers are among the most beautiful natural features on Earth, but unfortunately, little we do know about them. Nevertheless, we do know that glaciers have shaped the surface of the planet for millions of years, and their importance to life in the planet has been intrinsic to these natural wonders. Glaciers cover about ten percent of the planet’s surface, and they are the main reserve of fresh water. If they all were to melt, the sea level would rise dozens of feet. Thus not only would we loose all our reserves of fresh water, but also millions of acres of habitable land. If we add to that the fact that population growth has reached an overwhelming number that is causing additional stress to the land due to ever-growing need for development, the planet will not be able to support such a stress. Thus, as Michael Hambrey puts it, “Our future is indirectly bound up with the fate of glaciers and their influence on global climate and sea level.” With the current global warming accelerated by human activity, more and more glaciers around the world are becoming endangered, and in the tropics they are starting to disappear. Therefore it is important to put emphasis on the roll that glaciers have in the planet, by showing the different aspects of the natural world that are being affected by the shrinking of all the different types of icy features, such as glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and permafrost.
