Inner Out

The inner sounds of objects and substances picked up with contact mics or hydrophones never cease to amaze. For Inner Out, Italian sound designer and artist Nicola Giannini uses contact mics frozen in ice, and performs a concert on them by playing the ice. Using different objects and techniques, such as grinding, tapping, hitting the ice, or pouring hot water, he creates the source material which he processes with live electronics to create a surround concert.

Cryoacoustic Orb

Yes, another project dealing with the sound of ice. There’s something magical about the ever changing, granular sounds of melting ice we hear in Cryoacoustic Orb, by Jonathon Kirk and Lee Weisert. As the melting process takes several hours, the sounds slowly evolve until there is nothing left but water. 

Ice Music

More icy sounds of winter, made by Terje Isungset from Norway. Since 1999 he has been working with ice the main material to build his instruments. His first Ice Music album was recorded in the Ice Hotel in Sweden in 2001.

The sound of the ice instruments is never the same, as the material changes and changes in temperature change the timbre of the instruments. And apparently, the colder it gets, the better the ice sounds. For a list of concert dates visit Terje Isungset’s website.

Etude No.13

Japanese artist Mamoru creates ‘sound art’ by using normal, everyday objects and placing them in an abnormal situation. He calls these art works “Etudes”. 

Mamoru invites his audience to deeply listen to what is around them. In one piece the audience is asked to eat together with the artist, thus becoming part of the artwork itself. A great example of ‘Everyday Listening’. 

For Etude No.13 we listen to ice melting. Ice cubes are hung from the ceiling, and we hear the dripping of the ice melting. Next to that the sound of melting water in small glass tubes filled with frozen water is amplified by even smaller glass funnels. There is a sound example on Mamoru’s website.

The sound of frozen water

Berlin Based composer and sound artist Andreas Bick made underwater recordings of a frozen lake near Berlin. It is a wonderfully clear recording, made with underwater microphones placed directly under the ice sheet.

It reveals some haunting sounds we will never be able to hear live. If you would not know the source you would probably not guess these sounds are made by frozen water. Visit Andreas' blog Silent Listening and listen to his recordings!

Via Simon Wald-Lasowski