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In 2004, Mikhail Karikis was awarded a Malcolm Hughes Bursary from University College London for an art project planned to take place in Tornio, a Finnish town near the Arctic Circle. In his first visit there, Mikhail worked on a composition in which he sampled sounds of the crackling sea-ice in the Bothnian Gulf and the sounds of the wind. He returned to Tornio in the summer to witness the radical transformation of the area. As the quality of the actual surface and geography of the landscape change dramatically throughout the year, so do its sonic properties.
This project consists of a series of photographs and sound recordings. The
sounds of melting ice are a record of the altering sound-scape from the time
of the ever-nocturnal winter to the summer white-nights. They give a sonic
description of the vast transformation of the landscape, its geography and
materiality. Further, the sounds of rapid melting are a sombre reminder of
the environmental crisis of Global Warming which we are facing, while the
perpetual buzzing of insects documents the intensity of the restless processes
of regeneration which take place during the short Arctic summer.
