Whether through colossal architecture, timeless myths and legends, or remarkable deeds, humans have gone to great lengths to etch their footprint into history and ensure they are remembered.

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Cantica Gelidæ (“Frozen Chants”) is an audiovisual composition that explores the futility of this desire, particularly when faced against cosmic timescales. The work functions as an allegory: the singer’s voice—and the composer’s—is stretched, multiplied, fragmented, granulated, and ultimately frozen through Max/MSP, inevitably failing as the piece, like all things, must come to an end.​

The text brings together excerpts from Lucretius’s metaphysical epic De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), particularly passages concerning the nature of the voice—its physical properties, expressive capacities, and limitations. As such, the piece serves as a technologically immersive and temporally expansive exploration echoing our hyper-digital desire to preserve identity amidst our rapidly changing modern times.