2018 | Sound | 5.1 Surround Sound or Stereo | Part 1: 5 minutes, 41 seconds.

Ice Worms is the first chapter of ICE SONG, a proposed multi-part album of the inexplicable nature of ice ecosystems, beginning first with ice worm biology, recordings of their movements and sounds, captured and then expanded by imagination within field recordings of the glacier territories they call home.

These animals are in the the annelid family, and are similar to minature earthworms at only 1 to 3 centimeters in length. They are the only annelid members to make their home and spend their entire life cycle entirely within glacial ice, and are dependent upon glaciers maintaining consistent temperatures of around zero degrees celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit). At 40 degrees Fahrenheit or above, ice worms will melt and die.

This project attempts to confront a tiny but pervasive member of a largely-unaddressed ecological system, the organisms that live on and within glaciers— which ranges widely, from ice-loving algae to insects that resurrect after deep freezes, to the elusive blue-grey glacier bear, a color variant of the black bear thought to have evolved camoflauge for glacier margins.

The album will include the Ice Worm track as well as documents of seven other species and ecological dynamics.