Albedo Prospect · Ed Osborn

bitforms gallery and ISSUE Project Room present Albedo Prospect, a video installation by Ed Osborn considering the polar imaginary and its characteristic spatial and geographic disorientation. Projected as a video triptych, the work is a study of glacial landscapes in the Svalbard archipelago as well as the crackling sounds of its physical transformation. Osborn's work draws from personal audio and video recordings, incorporating a 1931 airship journey by Arthur Koestler. "These broadcasts were noted for their vivid and entrancing depictions of the terrain, in which Koestler found many ways to repeatedly describe the largely invariant scene of ice and snow." An eight-channel sound system from ISSUE Project Room surrounded the visual installation, allowing the work to inhabit the temporal space of ten days rather than one night, enabling deeper engagement with the Arctic visuals. "Albedo Prospect is a search that takes place along a horizon in flux. It frames a mental image of place and releases it into the light of a journey, only to be recollected in hindsight." Production support from EMPAC, Brown University, and Arctic Circle Residency Program.