Albedo, 2025

Shot in the icy water beneath the Arctic Ocean, Albedo flips our perspective on the imaginaries that have formed around the deep sea and deep space. The film's central motif is the world of melting glaciers and icebergs—ontologically complex objects that hold strong socio-ecological symbolism. Projected onto the ceiling of the museum, these frozen mountains act as both subject and structure, their underbellies becoming territories unto themselves, like celestial bodies cast adrift in a liquified cosmos. The work inverts our view on this submerged realm, questioning our sense of orientation and stability.

Albedo acts as a diptych with the 2019 video work Towards No Earthly Pole (2019), which rendered an eerie, blackened vision of the cryospheres at night. Albedo furthers this project by reaching down into the Arctic Ocean to similarly contrast the white vistas of dazzling snow and bright daylight. Foregrounding the importance of listening to both human and nonhuman languages, the score is composed using hydrophone recordings. Structured around a chorus of marine vocalization, it brings together the calls and echolocation clicks from orcas, sperm whales, bowhead whales, and humpback whales, forming a submerged lexicon of species unseen.

4K video, 16:10 aspect ratio, 3D ambisonics soundscape, continuous video loop

All images are © Julian Charrière / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Film
Editor: Johannes Förster
Score: Jana Irmert
Spatial Sound Designer: Felix Deufel
Post Production: Studio Johannes Förster
Editing Assistant: Leoni Faschian
Compositing Artist: Sean Sams, Neil Reynolds, Tom Freeman, Felix Geen
Colorist: Nadia Khairat Gómez
Post production assistance: Hannah Weidner, Valentina Gimenez
Technical Supervisor: Finn Jäger

Expedition
Expedition Coordinator: Morten Rasch
Field Recording Artist: Felix Deufel
Camera, ROV Operator & Director of Photography (DoP): Antoine Drancey
Lighting, ROV Operator & Freediver: Runar Jarle Stray Wiik
Underwater Lighting Development & Technical Supervision: Christophe LeClercq
Production Assistant: Mikael Rasch

Underwater field recordings and advice
Benjamin Erwin
Dr. William D. Halliday (Wildlife Conservation Society Canada)
Dr. John Hildebrandt
Dr. Joshua Jones (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
Dr. Brian Miller (Australian Antarctic Program)
Dr. Ilse van Opzeeland (Alfred Wegener Institut)

Underwater video footage and advice
Dr. Kim Bernard (Oregon State University)
Caitlin Bailey; Dr. Aaron Micallef
Dr. Steve Haddock, Lonny Lundsten
Dr. John Ryan (Monterey Bay Aquarium)
Alexander Semonov (Moscow State University)
Natasha Van Zandt
Dr. Edith A. Widder
Sebastian Zeck 

Sound sources for the score
Kendall Folkert, Jan Straley, Aaron Thode (NOAA)
MBARI Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
National Park Services
Scripps Whale Acoustics Laboratory (University of California San Diego)
Brian Miller (Australian Antarctic Program)
Elanor Miller (Australian Antarctic Division)
With recordings from: AWI PALAOA (Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Atlantic Ocean)

Acknowledgements
Haley Ha, Allison Miller, Logan Mock, Hannah Nolan, Carlie Wiener (Schmidt Ocean Institute)