While rock hunting across Antarctica last winter, WSU geochemist Jeff Vervoort was captivated by how the landscape revealed dramatic stories of merging glaciers, tortured ice, wind-sculpted snow, and glacial debris. But where he saw a language of science, Kathleen Ryan, an assistant professor of Interior Design, saw a language of aesthetic elements and principles, of curved lines, shapes, rhythm, and movement. The result was their interdisciplinary, husband-wife exhibit in spring’s Academic Showcase: Visual Language of Ice and Rock on the Frozen Continent.
Vervoort’s Antarctica research was funded by the National Science Foundation and featured in The New York Times‘ “Scientist at Work” blog.
Here are some samples from their presentation, with remarks collected by Washington State Magazine science writer Eric Sorensen.
Sea ice thaws into chunks 50 to 100 feet across, then refreezes, creating a mosaic landscape. Vervoort: “This is interesting to me because it has no scale.”
Ryan: “The repetition of shape creates a pattern—a somewhat random pattern, but still a pattern that implies movement. I am curious about how these geometric shapes were created. The shapes are not random, the geometry is so evident.”
Vervoort: “Instead of having polygonal boundaries, polygonal shapes [like refrozen sea ice], it’s more of a labyrinth, because you have water which is behaving in a fluid way, rather than ice in a solid way.”
Ryan: “It’s the pattern created by the contrast that first interests me. The solid shapes of the raised, roughly textured feature surrounded by the recessed smooth feature create an interesting contrast. The multiple values of blue-violet are also pleasing.”
Freshwater ice comes off the continent’s two large ice shelves and breaks off into the sea. Vervoort: “This is an area of concern in that, if these things continue to melt and release this water, that’s where a lot of the sea level rise could come from, because there’s a huge amount of ice and water captured in these.”
Ryan: “I am curious about the scale of this one. The jutting piece could be a few inches high or hundreds of feet high. The shape reminds me of ‘Refrozen blocks of sea ice, Ross Sea,’ but has more visible depth.”
Vervoort caught this image out his window while flying in on a jet. “I just love the balance of these merging glaciers… You can see the flow lines of these ice streams as they come into this main stem of the glacier… rivers of ice.” In a warmer era, the glacier valleys would be fjords.
Ryan: “The distinct line of the flow lines, create this impression of movement, which of course relates back to the physical process that created the lines.”
Vervoort: “You get the sense that the ice is on the move. It sits up on this polar plateau and its accumulating and slowly moving out to lower ground. And it gets through these mountains and it kind of butts up against them and it’s channeled through these mountains. Once it gets channeled, it starts picking up speed going through these tongues down to the sea. By the time it gets channeled like this, this glacier is really moving—meters a day.”
Ryan: “The distinct line of the flow lines, create this impression of movement which of course relates back the physical process that created the lines.”
Vervoort: “You can see the layers as the snow is blowing. But it is very much like dunes. It’s a windblown erosional depositional form.”
Ryan: “The curved line creates a pattern and there’s a rhythm to that pattern and the value creates a gradation, and then we feel movement because of the way that these curved lines are put together.”
Vervoort: Crevasses are formed as the ice is pulled from its end. “You’re actually pulling the ice apart.”
Ryan: “Here’s another earth process that creates an interesting pattern through the interaction of lines—small deep lines in the form of crevasses, and large broad lines through the lengthy ridges and change in color.”
Vervoort: “These polygonal patterns are the type of fracture patterns that we often see in rocks. They’re often at these sorts of angles.”
Ryan: Aesthetic elements and principles help designers figure out why something is aesthetically appealing. “But also I would hope that then it would lead to that question: How did this happen? Which gets you to the science part. For me, I’m interested in the back and forth. If it’s interesting scientifically, is there also an aesthetic judgment you can make about it?”