Peggy Weil: 88 Cores

88 Cores descends two miles through the Greenland ice sheet in one continuous pan. It is a time machine that transports the viewer through 110,000 years of climate history, which can be read in the banding and the trapped particulates of seasonal snowfall.

To generate her four-and-a-half-hour video, Weil worked with the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF) in Lakewood, Colorado, to digitize 88 cores from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project (GISP2D). These scrolling stills extend our view into the deep time and space of climate change and immerse us in a sublime pictorial field. According to Weil, “ 88 Cores is one of a series of extended landscapes—looking beyond the view out the window or in front of our eyes—to a broader understanding of the earth as including the ground beneath our feet and the atmosphere; the Underscape and the Overscape.”