MELT: The Memory of Ice by Betsey Biggs

A cinematic archive captured for a world where ice is a distant memory. An operatic conversation between generations in the time of climate change. Imagining a world where ice is a distant memory, the powerful multimedia opera and hybrid music-film MELT: The Memory of Ice archives the meanings and memories of ice for future generations through persuasive sonic and visual counterpoint. With spectacular aerial footage of glaciers giving birth to icebergs, visual portraits of Arctic residents, visitors and scientists, ambient music made from glimmers of Arctic sounds, and memories of ice sung by children’s choirs and the New York-based vocal ensemble M6: Meredith Monk Music Third Generation, this extraordinary experimental music-film will act as a powerful and emotional reminder to preserve our glaciers in a time of climate change.

Artist Bio

Betsey Biggs uses technology to combine image and sound in site-specific works, audiovisual performances, interactive installations, public interventions, relational projects, films and videos, musical compositions and multimedia theatrical works. Her body of work connects the dots between sound, music, visual art, place, storytelling and technology. It also deconstructs and arranges scraps of sound and image to clarify and recreate the experience of place, as well as adapting the technology of our contemporary world – mobile audio, digital video, interactive electronics – to engage people creatively with the physical and social worlds around them.

Her work has been presented at ISSUE Project Room, the Abrons Arts Center, Roulette, the Conflux Festival, MASSMoCA, Brown University, Harvard University, Sundance Film Festival, Hong Kong’s Videotage and on the streets of Oakland, CA and Brooklyn, NY.  She has collaborated with Nick Hallett, Pamela Z, Luciano Chasso, Margaret Lancaster, Evidence, The Now Ensemble, The BSC, So Percussion, Tarab Cello Ensemble, the Nash Ensemble, Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble and filmmakers Jennie Livingston and Amy Harrison. Her largest recent project, “Sunken Gardens”, a large outdoor sound installation for the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, employs induction loops to create eighteen fields of audio composed from musical and textual fragments inspired by the Jules Verne novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A new musical work, “Teewinot” is a sonic time lapse of the natural history of the Grand Teton mountains and will be premiered at several national parks in July 2016 by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble.