What to do with the gigantic scientific data archives? 

Play with them! 

klimaton ARCTIC≈2020 addresses the problem of communicability of scientific facts in the context of climate change in the form of a generative sound object. It questions the nature of doubt in the sciences and addresses the lack of a cultural approach to the earth as a holistic entity.  

The work is situated between science communication, eco-politics, technology production, and art production—based on a seminal event in scientific research: late 2020, the research expedition MOSAiC returned from its Arctic voyage, having spent more than a year collecting data with a kilometer-long network of measuring stations. It is the largest scientific data collection from the region ever and possibly also one of the last large-scale recordings of a disappearing landscape that is considered by scientists to be “the key witness of climate change.” 

Large data archives are by no means a solution to the problem as long as their contents are not given a socially accepted meaning. But should such efforts be left to science alone? Or does a transfer of those digital archives into collective memory need to take place via detours that do not rely exclusively on reason and predefined scientific rules? 

Together with a group of MOSAiC scientists, the composer Thies Mynther and a technical team including Juan Duarte, Chris von Rautenkranz, Martin Edelmann, and Jan Münther, the artist duo Adnan Softić and Nina Softić developed a sound instrument that outputs the data from the Arctic as sound—creating a large scale sonified portrait of a disappearing landscape. The instrument is a hybrid between a sonification device and a music instrument—allowing an open approach to the data.