Art Science collaboration

ICE Group / Prof. Georgina King

Faculté des géosciences et de l'environment / UNIL

2023 - 2025

Trapped.Charged is a video artwork that is inspired by the concept that minerals in icebound rocks contain trapped electrons that can help us to understand ice and glacial dynamics. Using photographs and rock samples collected by the ICE group from within the glaciers of the Alps, the artwork suggests an hypothetical journey of a sample rock from earth’s deep crust to the flowing ice of a glacier.

As the sample rocks are suspended from the ceiling, their images are transformed and reinvented. Luminescence signals are linked to artistic notions of time and gravity, creating new models of representation that also speak about perpetual change and other dimensions.

A new world is coming to existence. Whether the rock is buried in the ice, advances with the glacier, experiences its melting, travels in a river or becomes sand, it exists in a fragile equilibrium where random encounters connect the macro with the micro and the past with the present and the future. After all, the rock’s story is also the story of the glacier, the mountain, its valley, its natural environment, as well as the story of our own planet and source of life.

Scientific lead - Ph.D Audrey Margirier

Audio and sound - Paco Chambi

Glacier photography - Léa Rodari and Marjolein Gevers

Story board - Ph.D Audrey Margirier

Lab documentation - Christoph Schmidt

Scientific Background - Ph.D. Pontien Nizonyima

With support by: Ville de Lausanne / Service de la Culture

www.trappedcharged.wordpress.com