Anne Brodie and I planned to make a double igloo as a collaboration. We intended to have an entrance into the smaller of the two, then a connecting passage into a larger one which would be open to the sky and act as a cloud/sky chamber. In the end there was only time to build one. Adam, one of the Mechs was keen to help and in the end the three of us made the structure with Morag, a glaciologist helping at the end. The snow was wind driven and hard - perfect for the job, and we used a wood saw to cut the blocks, shaping them into wedges as we placed them. Anne went on to build a lace igloo structure with the off-cuts.
I had once seen a film of several Inuit making one in just over an hour, ours took three days mostly at odd moments or late into the evening after the flights. It was made as a spiral and we left the top open to the sky for a while to film and photograph drifting clouds. Then we filled it in and had a party with 8 of us inside. Later Jamie, Adam and myself slept a night in it. It was certainly no colder than a tent, but more beautiful. People have been sleeping in it ever since.
We had requested to have a digital projector flown in, so we could project and film moving images onto the interior. It arrived the day I flew to Fossil Bluff, so Anne remained and made a short film sequence of me sawing the blocks, projected very faintly onto the interior of the blocks themselves: very beautiful.
1 comment:
dear chris, what an extraordinary site of sights and sights and sights! i came to this via the Lewes Project of the Reed bed because I happen to be writing about "vortexs" and sussex. a bit mystical and alliptical to see your construction there, lewes, spanning the years my friend and I were talking about sussex vortexes! anyway, these antartica pages are beautiful and i commend you highly for this vision. Thankyou so much.
sincerely, daryl.
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