Ice sound
[2007-08-01]

animation: Lisa Roberts
Sydney 2007

words: Jack Ward
Mawson diary, 27 January 1955

A long whine,almost a horse's whinny, comes from the ice,
and at times strangely like a bird call.

Jack Ward, Mawson diary, January 1955

Ice sound was made in response to Ward's words.
A. A. Davies responded to the animation with a poem, Iceberg.
Davies' words are engraved into the art work, Oceanic Minds #01.

Iceberg

When frozen

Their shape is sharp

Jagged edges slicing.

Giant icebergs growing

In coldness of oceanic minds

Only tips emerge, the purity submerged

hollow jagged cathedrals of alabaster white

an ethereal blue entices lustre of buoyant mountains

Floating further from home, murmurs and temperature

hairline cracks, a spectre of majestic purity

fracturing and splintering, becoming

contextual representations.

Melting, deliquesce

Lost in lilac

Raw untamed

Thoughts contained

Within shapes, products

of the imagination, restricted

by the confines of language, words.

The true purity of unsubjected thought hidden.

Behind carefully deranged symbols and punctuation

Complete communication of pure thought is impossible.

The global warming of thoughts into language. Smoothing

Edges and creases into a homogenous disembodied

thought, now easily manipulated within the

confines of language. Single streams

of once pure thoughts, now

linear, unrecognisable.

A. A. Davies
Sydney, 2007

Oceanic Minds #01 [2007]
Found materials: Perspex sheets (x4)
Engraved and mounted with acrylic thread
360 X 360 X 60 mm
Unsigned and undated
Exhibitions: Nov. 2007, Adagio Gallery, Glebe, Sydney;
Sur Polar, Buenos Aires, 2008
AA Davis collection, Sydney