Trees planted today in the Botanic Garden will reach their full height only after the demise of the last glaciers of North America—remnants of the vast ice sheet whose leading edge ran right through Brooklyn, depositing the earth in which these trees now grow. Terminal Moraine places sonic representations of both past and future in the Garden so that visitors might contemplate the inflection point we currently inhabit in our climate’s history.

A 16-channel ambisonic surround-sound environment is situated within an open-air concrete structure in a newly planted section of the Garden. Drawing on research at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a generative music composition simulates the behavior of compressed ice crystals as they melt, gradually filling and then receding from the space. Recursive cello motifs then emerge, representing the branches of the new trees. By spatially positioning the audio, the piece “grows” these sounds to correspond to the trees’ anticipated future size.