What to do with the gigantic scientific data archives?
– Play with them.

Adnan Softić and Nina Softić with Thies Mynther
Moderation: Tirdad Zolghadr

The work of artist duo Adnan Softić and Nina Softić addresses the pressing challenge of communicating scientific facts within a context of climate change. It questions the nature of doubt in the natural sciences and addresses the lack of a cultural approach to the earth as a holistic entity.

Their project klimaton ARCTIC≈2020 is based on a seminal event in scientific research: late 2020, the research expedition MOSAIC returned from the Arctic, where it had been collecting data for over a year. It remains the largest example of data collection within a single region, and one of the last comprehensive inventories of a disappearing landscape, one that is, according the scientific community, a “key witness to 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. 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, composer Thies Mynther and a technical team including Juan Duarte, Chris von Rautenkranz, Martin Edelmann and Jan Münther, the artist duo Adnan and Nina Softić developed a sound instrument that emits data from the Arctic as sound – creating a large-scale sonic portrait of a disappearing landscape. The instrument is a hybrid between a sonification device and a musical instrument – allowing an open approach to the data.