I’ve been thinking about frozen methane a lot. I decided to stick with this for my final and I’m having a hard time figuring out what to do with it.
I know that I’m combining this final with my Readymades final, so I need to find a tangible representation of my idea. I wanted to do this anyway, but this gives me good constraints so that I can narrow things down.
Everyone can agree that the visual of this process is stunning. But what else? I need to find what to say, what point to make in order to make the message have the same impact as the visual.
So I started reading more into frozen methane. I found some really really interesting articles. More importantly, I found even more interesting references and/or metaphors that I think will help me give an interesting twist to my subject.
Here are some interesting terms or text bits that stuck out to me while reading about frozen methane and its process:
- Ice jellyfish
- Ice crystals
- arctic wetlands (aka: giant sponges)
- plants absorb methane
- carbon sink
- sleeping giant
- ticking time bomb
- rings of gas
- unplugging a giant freezer
- equivalent to all coal, oil and natural gas—but we can’t control it.
- wild card
- “The Siberian Shelf alone harbours an estimated 1,400 billion tonnes of methane in gas hydrates, about twice as much carbon as is contained in all the trees, grasses and flowers on the planet.”
- “If just one per cent of this [methane] escaped into the atmosphere within a few decades, it would be enough to cause abrupt climate change”
- “Between 1974 and 2000, methane emissions increased by 58 per cent in the part of northern Siberia”
I’m still figuring out what to do with it but my next step will be to mind map this and see where it can take me. I’m hoping to workshop this soon and lock down my final project by the next two weeks!