Splice Soundscapes Permafrost WAV
Some manifestations of climate change are easy to visualize: glaciers melting, rising sea levels, catastrophic storms. Permafrost is not one of those things; it is sometimes referred to as an “invisible threat.” Permafrost is any ground that remains frozen for at least 2 years. There are approximately 9 million square miles of area covered by permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere – nearly the size of the United States, China, and Canada combined. What happens when global temperatures rise and permafrost starts to thaw? It is estimated that permafrost holds nearly twice as much carbon frozen in the ground as exists in the atmosphere right now, so when it thaws it releases that carbon (among other gases). Carbon is a greenhouse gas that gets trapped in the atmosphere, leading to more global warming, creating a sort of vicious cycle. Hence, the invisible threat.
Producer Charles Van Kirk, instrumentalist / composer David Crowell and Splice’s Max Belau traveled to Alaska to try and sonify that invisible threat. They met with scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and interviewed them about permafrost research, they recorded extensive field recordings in and around Denali National Park, featuring saxophone performances by Crowell, an Alaska native. Once back in the studio, Van Kirk produced and mixed this sample pack, creating a Sensory Percussion instrument using the field recordings and doing extensive re-sampling and processing of Crowell’s saxophones. The end result is an extraordinary and experimental pack, Soundscapes: Permafrost.
What does it feel like to live on top of permafrost, knowing that the ground beneath your house’s foundation has a limited life span? To commute to work on roads that are warped by the thaw of the substrate? To look at rivers turned bright orange from iron leaching into the water from nearby permafrost? As you use these sounds, we invite you to imagine these scenarios that are happening now.
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