Glacial Sensing: Entanglements of Sound and Vision

Abstract

What is the relationship between vision and sound in more-than-human environmental sensing? This article traces an ethnography of glaciologists' experiences with technological sensing systems that surpass human sensing capabilities, producing an expansion of sensory knowledge that enmeshes both imagery and acoustics. Sound and vision emerge no longer as separate modalities, but in a united vocabulary of sensing in which the human and the machine are collaborators, producing a multi-eared and multi-eyed system by which icebergs and glaciers are observed and perceived as a quickly morphing process, rather than as a static object. It examines the manifold aesthetic variations and conversions of data from acoustic sensing systems into sounds and images that work together to reshape the scientific imagination of the cryosphere. This process ultimately reveals how technology changes perceptions and how glaciers, human bodies, and machines become intertwined with each other in a more-than-human system that holds the promise to diversify knowledge.