Fracture Resistance

This composition combines recordings made at different times of the year on Lake Ontario in order to track and trace the shifting climate. Sounds of thinning ice emerge from cracks spreading in a curving pattern. Winter guests from the Arctic arrive: long-tailed ducks call to each other. The piercing sounds of military jets provide a stark contrast to an ecosystem of co-operation and accommodation. Skipping stones turn the lake into a vibrating plate. Each impact creates a flexural/bending wave, radiating sound into the air, the short waves/high frequencies arriving first. These waves track the ice’s vanishing act, a harbinger of both the new season, and the seasons already lost, as climate shifts are written in the math of disappearance.

Released in February 2023 as a part of framework:seasonal ::: issue #12 album by framework editions