Since 2016, I have been recording the Morteratsch Glacier in the Swiss Engadine. The sounds inside the glacier are of an incredible variety and vitality, yet the more alive the glacier sounds, the less of it remains: the louder the melting, the faster its disappearance. Much of what I hear are air bubbles that have been trapped in the ice for hundreds of years, an archive of past atmospheres. As they escape, they create a rhythmic sequence, sometimes even a melody. Each of these sounds happens only once, then the air returns to our atmosphere. The archive becomes audible in the very moment it destroys itself.
This project is an attempt to save at least a small sample of these sounds. One minute, an excerpt from the Crying Glacier recordings of 2023, is translated from binary code into synthetic DNA. Using a method co-developed by ETH Zurich researcher Robert Grass, the DNA strands, visible only as a fine powder, are encapsulated in silica glass, filled into a pill-sized capsule and set into a borehole in the rock beside the glacier. A titanium plate above it carries the engraved instructions for turning the DNA back into sound.
This storage technique, inspired by fossilisation, ensures the long-term stability of the data: DNA sealed in glass can endure for thousands of years. What fascinates me is the ratio of scales: a glacier of around one and a half billion tonnes of ice, and a fine powder in a capsule the size of a pill. A fleeting minute of sound, meant to last millennia.
On 23 September 2026, the capsule is sealed into the rock at a public gathering: a hike up to the glacier tongue, short talks, and a live performance by musician and philosopher David Rothenberg, who plays his clarinet in direct dialogue with the glacier, its voice picked up by hydrophones lowered into the crevasses. Along the way, participants hear the recordings through wireless headphones at the very spots where they were made.
A hundred years after the recording, in 2123, the DNA is to be decoded and the sound played back into the valley, however the landscape may look by then. Once more the valley may be filled with cracking ice, gurgling meltwater and bursting air bubbles: acoustic traces of a vanishing body, shaped by the climate crisis of the early 21st century. If I imagine that today we could hear a landscape as it sounded a hundred years ago, I would be incredibly grateful. What this minute will mean in 2123, no one knows. It depends on the valley people will find then. Afterwards, the capsule returns to the rock as a long-term archive, so that the place keeps its acoustic memory: a sonic fossil. Until then, the minute itself remains unreleased.
The project grew out of SUISA’s “Zukunftsmusik” initiative, curated by Johannes Rühl, Jennifer Jans and Peter Kraut, which invited musicians to imagine music for an audience not yet born. Only the coordinates and decoding instructions are deposited at the Swiss National Sound Archive in Lugano; the DNA itself stays in the landscape.
Photos 1-2 by Ludwig Berger, 3-5 by Bruno Augsburger
Team:
Ludwig Berger – Recordings, concept, artistic direction
Prof. Robert Grass, ETH Zurich – DNA Encapsulation
Prof. Reinhard Heckel, TU Munich – DNA Error Correction Methods
David Rothenberg – Live performance
Matthias Huss, ETH Zurich / GLAMOS – Glacier lecture on site
Francesca Granito, ETH Zurich – DNA lecture on site
Johannes Rühl, curator for SUISA project – Lecture on site
Anastasia Orlova (Association Planète Bleue) – production, fundraising & partnerships
Leslie Bournot – project assistance
Nicholas Schärer – Co-development
Supported by:
ETH Zurich
Temperatio Stiftung
Canton of Graubünden
Elisabeth Weber Stiftung
SMKK-Stiftung
Stiftung Stavros S. Niarchos
SUISA