Earth Island Institute

Paul D. Miller—aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid—is a man on a mission. The DJ recently told Psychology Today magazine: "If I'm going to think about something, I'd rather really think about it."

Right now he's really thinking about the environment. Miller spent a month in Antarctica recently, recording the sound of ice melting. He has since mixed those sounds with other melodies and beats, and integrated them with a series of images to create the multimedia Sinfonia Antarctica. The name is a shout-out to British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who created a metaphorical portrait of Antarctica by the same name in 1949.

In his statement about the work, Miller writes that, "in the steps of environmentalists like Al Gore, or even films like March of the Penguins and Happy Feet," he aims to bring Antarctica to the contemporary imagination by digitally reconstructing it using historical maps, travelers journals over the last several centuries, crystalline ice’s resonant frequencies, and the Earth’s magnet poles.

The Antarctica project is the first in a DJ Spooky trilogy called Terra Nova. Next up he'll record the sound of sinking islands in the South Pacific, visiting Nauru and Vanuatu in The Maldives. For the third project, which will focus on desertification, he'll visit Namibia to record the sound of a desert growing ever larger.

When asked if his remixes of sea ice inform public debate, Miller said: "Absolutely. You can't be as didactic as a lot of people in the environmental movement would want. Persuasion has to be information-based, social-based, and, above all, emotion-based."

Give it up for the DJ.

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