Ice my medium
The Temperature my muse
Why? Minnesota.



Time Lapse of Ice Melting. 7 minutes per frame, in the medium of ice.

Creation Process

Each block contains exactly 4 cups of water. The water was frozen in a plastic container and then stored in my freezer. I made eighteen block before deciding that I'd had enough. Plus, I was running out of room in my refigerator. Then it was simply a matter of waiting until a hot day when I had the time. That day came on July 15th. It was hot enough to cook asparagus that day, let me tell you. So, perfect for my purposes.

First thing to do was to melt a test block. This way I could see how long a quart of water takes to melt in the sun, so I could pace the placement of the other blocks accordingly. It took a little less than 2 hours to completely melt away and by then it was starting to get cool, so I resolved to do that actual placement another day.

That other day came a week later, also on a tuesday. In the intervening time, I had made another block of ice, so I was left with 19 blocks to melt. 18 blocks over 2 hours comes out to a block approximately every 7 minutes. In practice this meant that as I went about my afternoon, surfing the internet, washing dishings, clean the house, every 7 minutes my cell phone's timer would go off and I'd drop whatever it was I was doing to carry a block of ice outside to lay on the pavement. This was rather tiring. Also, my hands were cold.

After a little over two hours of this, all of the ice had been distributed. Today was a little bit cooler than the testing day, and a bit cloudier, so the first piece of ice still hadn't completely melted. But I decided to take my photos anyway, since I figured getting the first image as a completely unmelted block was important. I took pictures of each ice from the side and from the top, which I have made into animated gifs, as well as two shots of the whole process. For the final product, each "frame" takes the form of a block of ice, each one representing seven minutes of change in the process of a block of ice melting.

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Oh, by the way:


Leaderboard timelapse, 1 day per frame

Technically not film or digital camera, but hardly in the spirit of things. I took a screen shot almost every day (I missed a couple when my computer was broken or when I just forgot), usually sometime in the morning. I started January 25th. I may or may not continue taking the shots. I can't say. This is, by the way, the reason that I did that tunneling thing with my player photograph - if you're looking for it you can see my player photograph sink into the distance. It's nifty.