Unintended Art of the Anthropocene: The Sound of Ice Melting

A conceptual art piece by Paul Kos, "The Sound of Ice Melting," photographed at SITE Santa Fe on March 23. (Photograph: © Tom Yulsman. With permission of the artist) You may have noticed that I've been out of action for a week. That's because I was on a short spring break getaway to New Mexico — where I saw this piece of conceptual art by Paul Kos. He produced the first version of this piece in 1970, so he could not have thought of it in this way, but I think it is a perfect artistic symbol for the unfolding Anthropocene Epoch. (If you're not familiar with that term, see my explanation of it in my first ImaGeo post.) Titled "The Sound of Ice Melting," the work consists of two 25-pound blocks of ice, eight standing boom microphones, an aging analog amplifier with audio mixing board, and speakers. I photographed it at SITE Santa Fe, where new blocks of ice are set out every day. Yes, the microphones are turned on. They are picking up something... It has been called "absurdist," but in the sense of a Zen koan, such as this one: