Thaw

Sixty winters of river ice, read in one scroll.

Client

St. Lawrence Ice Survey

Year

2024

Discipline

Digital experience

Studio

Montréal

Direction

Amélie Tremblay

Disciplines

Strategy · Digital · Motion

Thaw — wide frame — Fig.
06
.01 — Key frame
St. Lawrence Ice Survey
,
2024

F.002 — Brief

The St. Lawrence Ice Survey has photographed the river from the same bridge every winter morning since 1964. Sixty winters of freeze and break-up sat in boxes of contact sheets that only two hydrologists knew how to read.

F.003 — The interval

Freeze

→

Break-up

State A — FreezeState B — Break-upMove between the first state and the final state

We laid every morning side by side, one line per day, until each winter became a single image: the river closing, holding, then cracking open.

Scrolling moves you through the seasons, not the page. Stop anywhere and the original photograph surfaces under the line, with the date, the temperature and the observer’s handwriting.

Drag the playhead — first frame left, final frame right.

F.004 — Frames

Drag or scroll sideways · 04 frames