Tipping Points

Developing out of James Balog’s film, Chasing Ice, Barber and Adkins create Tipping Points I – an audiovisual (video) installation that vividly addresses issues of climate change and particularly the melting of glaciers. Scientists think that some two-thirds (132,000) of the estimated 200,000 glaciers across the world will disappear by 2100. In the installation 20 blocks of ice are embedded with pins. Of these, 13 are heated and melt revealing the pins within. The blocks are suspended and bound by copper wire which is used extensively in energy generation and networking technologies and so is a symbol of the drivers of climate change. As the ice melts, the sounds of the falling water droplets and pins are captured, treated and amplified, and integrated with other related ‘ice’ sounds to form a dramatic soundscape. At the conclusion of the installation, 13 pin ‘sculptures’ remain symbolising the new landscapes revealed by the receding ice. A second part of the proposed exhibition is an audiovisual (photography and sound) installation – Tipping Points II –comprising large form Duratrans images of large ice blocks embedded with pins. There will be 10 images accompanied by a soundscape of recorded materials from the Storglaciären in the Tarfala Valley in the Kebnekaise Massif, Sweden (some of these location recordings are also used in Tipping Point I). The final part of the exhibition is Tipping Points III which comprises a trilogy of photographic images by Barber (these are already complete). The first presentation of the exhibition will be in Future Media Theatre’s Playlab gallery in Sweden. We also have a commitment from Asbót Kristóf from FUGA Budapesti Építészeti Központ produkciós vezetője (gallery in Budapest) for an exhibition in the Autumn of 2026.