Watch This Guy Transform Huge Buildings Into Icebergs | Short Film Showcase

I guess my life reflects a lot of people's lives as we live in these heavily urbanized places covered in concrete, cars, technology all around us. But we aspire to sort of go to those natural places, and it's something that I'm constantly searching for. You know, I live in the city, and then I come out to places like this and look for nature or just look for that solitude. So it's just a combination of the things I enjoy.

Sir, my name's Joseph Michael and I'm a media artist. What I do is combine a mixture of, say, photography, video, moving image, ESP digital artwork. My passions in life? I'm passionate about exploration, adventure, first and foremost, but I really love photography, the most simple and simplistic form of art. When I'm taking photographs, that's just me and the camera, always learning every day. Art is about doing complex things for a simple reason.

So in terms of what I've created on the Museum, it's a very simple idea. It's an iceberg; it's in the city. I mean, think about it: simple, but it's such a complex process. I enjoy the technical challenges. I enjoy things that push me further in terms of what I'm learning and what I'm discovering.

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We chatted about sailed across the Drake Passage and we spent a month around the entire tip Peninsula. The idea was to photographically mount icebergs, the scale and aura of the place. It has an aura; I don't know, it feels otherworldly, and it's kind of unnerving. In terms of environmental messages, I try not to be too forceful with what I'm creating. I'd like to present an idea, not give too many answers to my interpretation of what's going on.

So in terms of the iceberg, it's just placing it in an urban environment so people can see the size and scale of an iceberg. People got to ask their own questions.

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It's hard to get someone engaged with, obviously, sustainability or looking after our environment based on practical science, you know, and ideas connecting people with a feeling of grandeur or the aura of nature from in my mind. You know, connect some of the deckle ever, but if you're not connecting at the heart, you're not really engaged in the topic.

The whole project, from start to the end of the installation in Auckland, took four years. It took us two years to mount the expedition to Antarctica, fund the crew, get down there, film the content, and in the next two years we spent in creating the installation. It was pretty exciting to start to see the digital work come into a physical space.

You're sort of in a physical world in Antarctica, and then I'm in a digital virtual world for months and months and months, editing, looking at a screen. Then to see it give a physical presence in the real world was pretty exciting. With our projections, we did like test projections on scale models because otherwise, you don't have a chance before you put it on the building. You need to sort of get closer to knowing that it's going to work because you take photographs.

We did like a three billion point scan of the building, which gave the building scan, and you sort of never really entirely certain that's going to match up perfectly. So we do a series of scale models to get us close to projecting on that final building.

I guess it's like peeling an orange; you've peeled the skin off the iceberg when we photograph it. It's like an orange peel, and we pull it off and then we wrap that back onto the building. The process isn't that simple; what goes through several layers to get to that process essentially is like putting it back on.

The biggest thing I've learned over the last few years is how important sound is for the emotional connection, and especially with art. It's really important that people feel something. So, you can put whatever visuals you like, but adding that sound element and paying close attention to the sound really makes a difference.

I think the composition was designed to transport people to how I felt in Antarctica. I had no idea that each iceberg would be completely unique and have a sound signature. I took a sound recordist knowing that there would be potential to capture things, but I had no idea about the diverse nature of the sound down there.

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This is the biggest thing about being an artist or a creative: you've got to have that lack of fear of failure because, you know, you don't succeed all the time, and as a creative, not every project is going to be successful. You just have to start and see where it leads.

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