Aphairesis

In the 534 Gallery window in the dark of winter is Aphairesis (2026), an animation by artist Lee Arnold made in collaboration with Columbia University glaciologist Marco Tedesco, who spent years doing fieldwork on the Greenland ice sheet. Together they translated his ice-melt data into sound, and Arnold built an animation from that sound.

The work extends Arnold’s research into the history of scientific visualization and the ways images of data have framed our understanding of the planet. Aphairesis takes figures normally read as data and makes them something heard and felt.

The title comes from the Greek for “taking away.” Arnold and Tedesco discuss the project in “The Hidden Sound of Ice,” an essay published in Pioneer Works’ Broadcast magazine and found online here.

2:30, looped. 4K video, stereo sound.

Lee Arnold (b. 1972, London, UK) is an artist whose practice spans drawing, collage, photography, animation, and sound. Working at the intersection of art and science, he examines how the instruments and processes used to gather information about natural phenomena influence our relationship to the environment. Arnold has exhibited at venues including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Exit Art, Eyebeam, and Pioneer Works in New York; the Institute for Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; and SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He is a Fulbright Scholar and the recipient of fellowships from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, MacDowell, and the DAAD at the Universität der Künste Berlin.