Greenland’s Ice Sheet

Between Melt and Memory

Between Melt and Memory is a collaborative work between Francesca Samsel and Benjamin Keisling, an artistic perspective on research into the history of Greenland’s ice sheet. Video Link

Tracing the Greenland Ice Sheet’s ice divide from the melting margins to its two‑mile‑thick summit 700 kilometers inland, Between Melt and Memory invites viewers to the in-between where geologic memory meets scientific foresight. The immersive, multi-sensory exhibition featuring glass and clay sculpture and projected visuals invites viewers to encounter the complexities of climate change through tactile forms, connection to the research sites and images from below the ice sheet. Based in scientific observations, here data are transformed via an artistic voice providing the opportunity for viewers to explore through science and metaphor while reflecting the changes within this fragile landscape.

Fused glass rendering of ice cores, part of the interactive section of the work.

The 3 sites This work highlights three sites where subglacial materials including sediment-rich ice, sediment, and bedrock have been recovered, enabling scientists to document when different regions were last ice-free. The sites traverse from the thin margin of the ice sheet (Prudhoe Dome, ice-free 7,000 years ago), following the ice divide inland (Camp Century, shown here, ice-free 430,000 years ago) to its highest and thickest point at the summit (GISP2, ice-free one million years ago). By studying these materials in combination with numerical models, we can determine the climatic thresholds that drove past ice-sheet retreat, enabling us to better predict the ice sheet’s future behavior. 

Camp Century where bedrock was drawn from below the ice sheet in the 1960’s.

About Between Melt and Memory

Forty percent of Earth’s population lives within one hundred kilometers of the coast, concentrating lives, cultures, and infrastructure in regions most exposed to rising seas. Between Melt and Memory invites viewers into the in-between space where geologic time meets scientific foresight—where the deep memory of ice and sediment intersects with the tools that allow us to glimpse possible futures. The work offers an encounter with climate science not as abstraction, but as material, sensory experience.

At its core, the installation traces the spine of Greenland’s ice sheet, from the thinning, melting margins near the ocean to its two-mile-thick summit some 700 kilometers inland. Scientific methods reveal that this immense body of ice has been far smaller in the past, responding to prolonged warmth over millennia. Subglacial matter becomes data, becomes model, becomes image, and finally becomes felt experience. This work translates isotopic records and computational simulations into visual and tactile languages that mediate between scientific models, display systems, and public understanding.

Fused glass mimicing the patterns in the ice and sediment cores

Digitally rendered projections of ice, terrain, and modeled processes are paired with interpretive objects formed from the materials of the Earth itself—glass, (above) silica and mantle. These tactile artifacts echo the ice and sediment cores that scientists extract to read Greenland’s history. Viewers encounter both the immaterial precision of computation and the physical weight of matter shaped by the human hand. Together, they create a multisensory environment in which knowledge is not only seen, but touched and felt.

Driving the work is a concern about the accessibility of climate science. The processes by which knowledge is created—sampling, modeling, simulation—often remain opaque to the public, even as their implications shape the future of habitability. Between Melt and Memory melds scientific artifacts with artistic transformation to provide pathways into this complexity. It does not ask viewers to master the data. Instead, it offers entry through curiosity and wonder, acknowledging that not all facts must be present to begin contemplating responsibility and change.

At each of three sites, scientific analysis of ice, sediment and rock reveals the last time these ancient materials saw the sun – meaning the ice was smaller than today:  at Prudhoe Dome, 7 thousand years ago; at Camp Century, 430 thousand years ago; and at the Summit, one million years ago. Closest to the coast at Prudhoe Dome, the relatively recent exposure of these materials tells us with a high degree of certainty that the ice sheet receded by ~10% in response to limited high-latitude warmth. As we traverse deeper inland to the other sites, our knowledge becomes less certain—yet these sites tell of times when the ice sheet was much smaller or even absent. If warming continues, such states become plausible. That risk motivates continued scientific innovation and the application of high-performance computing to unravel the mysteries these ancient archives encode.

The installation becomes an in-between realm connecting Greenland’s geologic past to near-future sea-level realities, mediated by the viewer’s own perceptions and lived experience. As attention turns toward Greenland while we discuss ownership, the seas continue to rise.

In this documentation, the work is displayed across 24 8K monitors in the TACC Visualization Lab. For the SIGGRAPH Gallery, the same presentation is proposed through immersive projection, enveloping viewers within this space between melt and memory.

The Research Underpinning