DELIQUESCING / THE DYNAMIC ATMOSPHERIC SYSTEMS OF THE VATNAJÖKULL

Grounding / Into the Cyanosphere

The atmospheric landscape of Iceland is, undoubtedly, of a highly unique and dynamic nature. A boundless horizon of blues, the shifting curtains of green and violet light of the Aurora, black sand beaches, waterfalls, rainbows, vast rivers of ice, and days of limitless light or darkness. It was this such fascination with the dynamics of light, climate and landscape dynamics that drew me into the realm of the Vatnajökull through the lens of atmosphere itself. Following on from my design explorations during the first semester, which focused on fieldwork methods of printmaking with melting glacial ice to produce an atmospheric ‘archive’ of present and historic landscape conditions, I began to consider the expansion of the project – both spatially and temporally – to consider global atmospheric and glacial futures in the shadow of large-scale ice melt. This recalibration of the conceptual narrative of my project led me from sky to ice to a new shade of blue: water.

In oder to paint a comprehensive picture of the speculative future of a potentially ice-less Icelend, in the wake of complete glacial melt, I began to investigate unknown and unexplored territory: under the ice. Through an interpolation of subglcacial topographies measured by echoing imagery - which revealed the lowest subglacial elevations - as well as existing contours of the wider territory, predicted sea level rise, and an undertsanding of the morphological tendency of the rivers to braid and carve valleys; I sought to develop a speculative map of future water networks that illustrates the future watery landscape of the former glacier.

Deliquescing, or becoming liquid, represents not only the dynamic processes which bridge the gap between my conceptual thinking of semester one and two, but an emergent theme of anchoring design interventions in the dynamic atmospheric processes of the landscape itself. Speicifcally, anchored within the global impact of widespread glacial melt.

What could the memories preserved within the ice become? Which future landscape archives might emerge? How will the distinct atmosphere of the landscape transform as it becomes liquid?

Deliquescing

(n) to become liquid; To melt away; To disappear as if by melting.

Carving

The formative power of water on the landscape, which - in Iceland, owing to the morphology of the landscapehas a tendency to braid in lower energy environments. In more ferocious instances, the force of water has carved entire valleys.

Plucking

‘Glimpses of smoothly moulded granite bore witness to a much larger ice sheet that had covered Patagonia 20,000 years ago. Yet despite the erosive force of thousands of years of moving ice, the mountain sides were often lumpy, crumpled like used paper bags, capped by gleaming snowdrifts. This apparent contradiction of juxtaposed smooth and roughly hewn rock reflects two important processes by which glaciers sculpt their landscape, which often occur on different sides of a mountain when buried by ice. ‘Abrasion’, a bit like sanding, occurs on the upstream side as the glacier flows over the obstacle and its base melts under pressure, while ‘plucking’ (or quarrying) happens on the downstream side, when meltwater worms its way into rock crevices and freezes as pressure is relieved the rock becomes weakened and fragments are eventually pulled away from the mountain as the ice moves downhill’2

Scoring the dynamic atmopsheric systems of the landscape with increasing climate instablility over the next two hundred years

Prevalence of sunlight

Projected cloud change

Volcanic eruptions

Sublacial light levels

Frequency and intensity of Jökaulhaups

Glacial discharge

Glacial melt

Disrupted ecological succession

Sea level rise

Glacier Sandcastles

Inspried by Katie Paterson’s ‘First There is a Mountain’3, I began to experiment with more sculptural, active experiments in the expanded sense of drawing. Using negative impressions of the Vatnajökull’s topographies, I built sandcastles on the beach, scultping sand into microgeological forms of the glacier. In an exploration of the formative - and often destructive - effect of water on these fragile landscapes, ocean tides and poured water recreated the vast geological forces at play. Smoothing ragged peaks, braiding rivers, carving valleys, and swelling lagoons. Through the creation of these ephemeral models, and film, I began to mediate on the post-glacial, watery future of the Vatnajökull at large, and explore which new landforms might emerge.

‘The river of course becomes smaller a these tributarie are passed. It shrinks first to a brook, then to a stream; this again divides itself into a number of smaller streamlets, ending in mere threads of water. These constitute the source of the river, and are usully found among the hills / a brief residence among the mountains would prove to you that they are fed by rains /

Whence comes the rain which forms the mountain streams? Rain does not come from a clear sky. It comes from clouds. But what are clouds? /

What, then, is this thing which at one moment is transparent and invisible, and at the next moment visible as a dense opaque cloud?

It is the stream or vapour of water from the boiler /

Is there any fire in nature which produces the clouds of our atmopshere? There is : the fire of the sun /

Thus, by tracing backward, without any break in the chain of occurences, our river from its end to its real beginnings, we come at length to the sun /

You soon learn that the mountain snow feeds the glacier. By some means or other the snow is converted into ice. But whence comes the snow?

Like the rain, it comes from the coulds, which, as before, can be traced to vapour raised by the sun. Without solar fire we could have no atmospheric vapour, without vapour no clouds, without clods no snow, and without snow no glaciers. Curious then as the conclusion may be, the cold ice of the [Vatnajökull] has its origins in the heat of the sun. 4

‘We have here a example of the manner in which phenomena, apparently remote, are connected together in this wonderful system of things that we call Nature. You cannot study a snowflake profoundly without being led back to it step by step to the constitution of the sun. It is thus throughout Nature. All its parts are interdependent, and the study of any one part completely would really involve the study of it all.’5