Sights and Sounds of Wonder
A sound and art installation from the Polar Regions of Earth
The Rosette is honored to host a captivating new photography exhibit and sound installation by photographer Joaquin Delgado in collaboration with composer Mike Vernusky. This spring 2026 installation includes 12 breathtaking images by Delgado captured in the earth’s polar regions, alongside Vernusky’s Polar Symphony created from sounds he personally recorded in the arctic. Artist statements are below as well as an on-demand recording of Vernusky’s Polar Symphony ’Time on the Verge of Collapse’ and web-resolution versions of Delgado’s 12 photographs. If you would like to support ACG’s commitment to the creation and curation of new art, click here.
Artist Statement
Joaquin Delgado, Photographer
Being in the polar regions is immersing one self in a world defined by the solid form of water. Water, clouds, snow, and ice interplay with everything as they mutate back and forth from liquid to solid to vapor. Snow and ice take different forms and shapes. Light gets diffracted and reflected into different hues and colors by the snow, water and ice. Habitats and the rhythms and cicles of life in the polar regions are ruled by these physical transitions.
The beauty of these vast polar regions and the life they hold keep bringing me back year after year to capture photographically this beauty.
Matt Hinsley made me aware of Mike Vernusky’s project to record the sounds in the Arctic region and suggested to do an exhibit together. Within seconds of starting to listen Mike’s recordings, I jumped at Matt’s idea of Mike and I doing an exhibit together. It was exciting, Mike had capture the element missing from each and all of my photographs: the sounds that were part of the scenes I had photographed. His work and my work complement each other and together they create a fascinating experience.
I hope that listening to Mike’s “Polar Symphony” while looking at my photographs from the Arctic and the Antarctic regions will allow each person to immerse for few moments into these unique regions of our world and safely get lost in their beauty.
My thanks to Matt for having the idea of creating this exhibit and providing the venue for it.
Artist Statement
Mike Vernusky, Composer
This past March, I participated in The Arctic Circle, a mobile artist residency in which, for two uninterrupted weeks, I lived aboard a barquentine ship while circumnavigating Svalbard. Making twice-daily excursions deep into the Arctic to record sound, I was among thirty artists working across a wide range of disciplines, and one of only two focused exclusively on electronic sound.
The Arctic proved to be one of the most demanding environments I have ever recorded in—and, at the same time, it was the experience of a lifetime. On our first night at sea, a school of beluga whales pierced the stillness, allowing me to lower hydrophones into the water and capture their vocal exchanges.
Nearly every day, a glacier strained at its edge before giving way to collapse, irrevocably reshaping the landscape. These events arrived without warning; the challenge was to already be listening and recording when they did. Upon returning, I began assembling an archive of these recordings, so they might be experienced by others. The process unfolded over several months, driven by an urgency to preserve a sound that still resonated vividly in my memory. And yet, despite how closely the sounds aligned with those internal impressions, something essential remained absent: a visual counterpart.
This led me to the work of Joaquin Delgado, a fellow Arctic explorer whose photographic practice spans the High Arctic and Antarctica. From my first encounter with Joaquin’s images, it was clear that our approaches were already in dialogue—each revealing something latent in the other through a kind of third lens. My hope for this installation is that when combined, these sounds and images will invite you to inhabit these moments: to listen, to look, and to immerse yourself in the Arctic as we experienced it.
