Artist to Build a Glacier in the Desert

For artist Ap Verheggen there is a fine line between art and experiment. Last year the Dutch artist placed two sculptures on icebergs and intends for them to float off the coast of Greenland, sending a message about how climate change is also changing culture. That was a project he called cool(E)motion.

cool(E)motion, iceberg sculpture off Greenland, 2010

During his cool(E)motion installation he saw that first hand as native Greenlanders struggled to travel over treacherous sea ice when the winter freeze didn’t come. The Inuit depend on dogsleds to get around but the year he did the iceberg sculpture the ice was too thin to cross.

Inspired by his Greenland experience, he wants people to be able to break off icicles in the hot desert sun. In a new digital rendering of a planned project he calls SunGlacier, Verheggen is taking two seemingly incompatible elements — ice and deserts — and merging them into one thought-provoking installation.

SunGlacier, ice-making sculpture in the desert, anticipated date, 2013

With the help of a refrigeration company, Verheggen is planning to build gigantic elm-leaf-shaped sculptures outfitted with solar panels to collect sunlight in the desert. These giant water collectors will then absorb moisture from the air, freeze it on the back of the ridges in the leaves and in essence create glaciers in the desert.

The jury is still out on whether this is truly art or merely a way to solve an impending global water crisis. Either way, Verheggen is hoping to make people think.

He tells the Associated Press, “I give inspiration. What you can do with it is up to you.”

Verheggen takes the idea of art being in the eye of the beholder one step further by inspiring the audience to take his art and make something of it. In this case, create a way to produce water in the desert using solar energy to power cooling condensers that soak up humidity from the desert air.

Concerned about rapid global warming, he believes smart and innovative people need to be spurred to find creative responses to the changing climate. He says, “You have to open the borders of your thinking. To make ice in the desert is breaking down the border, and that is opening a new world.”

But his SunGlacier project is merely a philosophical statement, meant to demonstrate that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible. He says the piece is not meant to solve the world’s impending water crisis.

But if it has that effect, I’m sure he wouldn’t object.

So far the desert glacier is just a digital sketch. But Cofely, a Dutch refrigeration company that makes ice rinks and large walk-in refrigerators for food storage, is helping Verheggen test his theory for creating ice in desert conditions.

An unidentified African country has apparently volunteered to house the sculpture once the concept testing is finished next year.

SunGlacier, digital sketch of proposed desert installation

According to plans for the project, engineers have already produced a 4-inch-thick layer of ice on a slab of aluminum inside a shipping container-sized box that simulates desert conditions. With the air temperature set at 86 Fahrenheit and plans to crank it up to 122 a humidifier provides the moisture, and a fan is directed at the ice like a desert breeze. The end of the process results in a pool of water dripping off the surface of the ice sheet even as it thickens.

The refrigeration company is using only off-the-shelf technology. Erik Hoogendoorn, the project manager says, “Everybody thinks it’s dry in the desert, but it’s roughly the same amount of moisture in the air as here.”

The head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Water Education says, “The project demonstrates that in a totally hopeless environment you can still generate hope. The message is that what many call the looming water crisis is not inevitable. There are solutions, and it all depends on human ingenuity. It all depends on us.”

András Szöllösi-Nagy runs the UNESCO water institute. The engineer and hydrologist says Verheggen’s art piece will carry symbolic importance. He adds, “We are not good at conveying simple messages in a powerful way. Science has its own limits, beyond which art can go.”