FINSE, Norway: Inside a giant igloo in a snowy Norwegian village, the sound of a horn rings out, warming the mood of a freezing audience, huddled together in -24 Celsius.
But the four musicians performing are even colder: the instruments they are playing are all made of ice.
The xylophone, claves and wind instruments have been painstakingly carved from ice blocks extracted from a frozen lake, and are now part of a finger-numbing performance at the 13th Ice Music Festival in the mountain village of Finse.
The problem is, the longer the musicians play, the more the instruments start to disintegrate.
It is not an easy task “to perform on instruments that are melting while you play them,” says percussionist Terje Isungset, also the founder of the festival.
Wearing thick wool gloves, he blows warm air into his ice-sculpted horn, illuminated under blue and turquoise lights.
Next to him, a singer with an angelic voice covers her mouth with a scarf to stay warm, while a bass player removes his gloves so he can pull the strings on his ice-made instrument.
The setting of the festival, 195 kilometers (121 miles) west of Oslo, is not for anyone sensitive to a shivering climate.
Held between February 2 and 3 inside an igloo built solely of ice, dozens of people wearing clothing fit to survive freezing mountain weather sit on snow benches while cheering and wrapping their arms around each other.
As the night grows older, a band member blows into a long ice wind instrument shaped like an Australian didgeridoo, vibrating across the venue.
“It’s a fine line between art and madness,” Emile Holba, a UK-based photographer and crew member, tells AFP as he bursts into laughter.
“Things can go wrong, instruments can break...the audience likes the purity of it,” he adds.
The festival has previously been held in Geilo, a ski resort in the central mountain region of Norway.
But organizers say the weather there has become milder, making it difficult to build ice venues and harder to prevent the instruments from melting.
“This winter... the ice was really slushy and difficult to deal with,” Isungset said.
“It’s the first time I have seen ice like this.”
In search of guaranteed freezing temperatures, the festival moved further west to Finse, a 30 minute train ride from Geilo.
Surrounded by mountains framing a glacier, the area was used to create the snow planet “Hoth” in the opening scene of Star War’s movie “The Empire Strikes Back.”
The village was also the base for Antarctic expedition training by British explorer Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922) and his Norwegian counterpart Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930).
“It’s kind of otherworldly...there is magic there,” says Holba.
Preparing the festival is no simple task.
It took organizers a week to build the igloo and the ice needed to be sourced and collected by a crew of more than 20 people.
Large chunks were removed from a nearby lake and the musicians used chainsaws, hammers and chisels to carefully sculpt the instruments.
“It’s just music....and trying to create something out of nearly nothing,” Isungset said.
After the festival, some of the instruments do become nearly nothing again, the ice dripping away back into the earth.
But a few of the ice-creations do survive.
If deemed to be in good enough shape, the instruments are stored inside a freezer, waiting in frozen isolation, to be used again the following year.
Ice instruments ring out coolest music in Norway
Ice instruments ring out coolest music in Norway
The 2025 Grammy Award nominations are about to arrive. Here’s what to know
- The 2025 Grammy Awards will air Feb. 2 live on CBS and Paramount+ from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles
NEW YORK: The 2025 Grammy Award nominations are just around the corner — who will compete for the top prizes?
Nominees will be announced during a video stream live on the Grammy website and the Recording Academy’s YouTube channel on Friday at 8 a.m. Pacific and 11 a.m. Eastern, kicking off with a pre-show 15 minutes earlier.
A host of talent is on deck to announce the nominees, including Gayle King, Jim Gaffigan and a long list of past Grammy winners: Brandy Clark, Kirk Franklin, David Frost, Robert Gordon, Kylie Minogue, Gaby Moreno, Deanie Parker, Ben Platt, Mark Ronson, Hayley Williams and last year’s best new artist recipient, Victoria Monét.
Only recordings commercially released in the US between Sept. 16, 2023 through Aug. 30, 2024 are eligible for nominations, so don’t expect to see album nods for Future’s “Mixtape Pluto” (though Future and Metro Boomin’s “We Don’t Trust You” is very likely to score a nomination), George Strait’s “Cowboys and Dreamers,” Tyler, the Creator’s “Chromakopia,” or “Warriors,” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first full post-“Hamilton” musical with Pulitzer finalist Eisa Davis.
There’s plenty of unknowns going into the announcements: Will Beyoncé and Post Malone receive nominations in the country music categories following the success of their massive albums “Cowboy Carter” and “F-1 Trillion,” respectively, even though they are megastars previously not directly associated with the genre?
Will Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” the biggest song of the year that combines his country twang with the familiar sample of J Kwon’s 2004 rap hit “Tipsy” dominate?
The 2025 Grammy Awards will air Feb. 2 live on CBS and Paramount+ from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
Prison break: Monkeys escape from South Carolina medical research facility
- Alpha Genesis provides primates for research worldwide at its compound
- Alpha Genesis $12,600 in 2018 after dozens of primates escaped
Forty-three monkeys escaped from a compound used for medical research in South Carolina but the nearby police chief said there is “almost no danger” to the public.
“They are not infected with any disease whatsoever. They are harmless and a little skittish,” Yemassee Police Chief Gregory Alexander said Thursday morning.
The Rhesus macaque primates escaped from the Alpha Genesis facility Wednesday when a new employee didn’t fully shut an enclosure, Alexander said.
The monkeys are females weighing about 3 kilograms and are so young and small that they haven’t been used for testing, police said.
Alpha Genesis employees “currently have eyes on the primates and are working to entice them with food,” police said in a statement issued around noon Thursday.
The company usually handles escapes on site, but the monkeys got outside the compound about 1.6 kilometers from downtown Yemassee, Alexander said.
“The handlers know them well and usually can get them back with fruit or a little treat,” Alexander said by phone.
But rounding up these escapees is taking some more work. Alpha Genesis is taking the lead, setting up traps and using thermal imaging cameras to recapture the monkeys on the run, the chief said.
“There is almost no danger to the public,” Alexander said.
People living nearby need to shut their windows and doors so the monkeys can’t find a place to hide inside and if they see the primates, call 911 so company officials and police can capture them.
Alpha Genesis provides primates for research worldwide at its compound about 80 kilometers northeast of Savannah, Georgia, according to its website. The company did not respond to an email asking about Wednesday’s escape.
In 2018, federal officials fined Alpha Genesis $12,600 after dozens of primates escaped as well as for an incident that left a few others without water and other problems with how the monkeys were housed.
Officials said 26 primates escaped from the Yemassee facility in 2014 and an additional 19 got out in 2016.
The group Stop Animal Exploitation Now sent a letter to the US Department of Agriculture asking the agency to immediately send an inspector to the Alpha Genesis facility, conduct a thorough investigation and treat them as a repeated violator. The group was involved in the 2018 fine against the company.
“The clear carelessness which allowed these 40 monkeys to escape endangered not only the safety of the animals, but also put the residents of South Carolina at risk,” Michael Budkie, the executive director of the group, wrote in the Thursday morning letter.
Trump victory renews interest in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and other fictional dystopias
- Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic about a country in which women are brutally repressed has been high on the Amazon.com best seller list
NEW YORK: “The Handmaid’s Tale” is selling again.
Since President-elect Donald Trump clinched his return to the White House, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic about a country in which women are brutally repressed has been high on the Amazon.com best seller list. “The Handmaid’s Tale” was popular throughout Trump’s first term, along with such dark futuristic narratives as George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” both of which were in the Amazon top 40 as of Thursday afternoon. Another best-seller from Trump’s previous time in office, Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,” was in the top 10.
Pro-Trump books also were selling well. Former first lady Melania Trump’s memoir, “Melania,” was No. 1 on the Amazon list, and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” was in the top 10. Donald Trump’s photo book “Save America” was in the top 30.
At Barnes & Noble, “Fiction and non-fiction books that feature fascism, feminism, dystopian worlds and both right-and-left leaning politics rocketed up our sales charts with the election results,” according to Shannon DeVito, the chain’s director of books. She cited “Melania,” “On Tyranny” and Bob Woodward’s latest, “War,” which covers the responses of Trump and President Joe Biden to the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
DeVito also cited “a massive bump in dystopian fiction,” notably for “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “1984.”
First artwork by humanoid robot sells for $1.3 million
REUTERS: A portrait of English mathematician Alan Turing became the first artwork by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction, fetching $1,320,000 on Thursday.
The 2.2 meter (7.5 feet) portrait “A.I. God” by “Ai-Da,” the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist, smashed pre-sale expectations of $180,000 when it went under the hammer at London auction house Sotheby’s Digital Art Sale.
“Today’s record-breaking sale price for the first artwork by a humanoid robot artist to go up for auction marks a moment in the history of modern and contemporary art and reflects the growing intersection between A.I. technology and the global art market,” said the auction house.
Ai-Da Robot, which uses AI to speak, said: “The key value of my work is its capacity to serve as a catalyst for dialogue about emerging technologies.”
Ai-Da added that a “portrait of pioneer Alan Turing invites viewers to reflect on the god-like nature of AI and computing while considering the ethical and societal implications of these advancements.”
The ultra-realistic robot, one of the most advanced in the world, is designed to resemble a human woman with a face, large eyes and a brown wig.
Ai-Da is named after Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer and was devised by Aidan Meller, a specialist in modern and contemporary art.
“The greatest artists in history grappled with their period of time, and both celebrated and questioned society’s shifts,” said Meller.
“Ai-Da Robot as technology, is the perfect artist today to discuss the current developments with technology and its unfolding legacy,” he added.
Ai-Da generates ideas through conversations with members of the studio, and suggested creating an image of Turing during a discussion about “A.I. for good.”
The robot was then asked what style, color, content, tone and texture to use, before using cameras in its eyes to look at a picture of Turing and create the painting.
Meller led the team that created Ai-Da with artificial intelligence specialists at the universities of Oxford and Birmingham in England.
Meller said Turing, who made his name as a World War II codebreaker, mathematician and early computer scientist, had raised concerns about the use of AI in the 1950s.
The artwork’s “muted tones and broken facial planes” seemingly suggested “the struggles Turing warned we will face when it comes to managing AI,” he said.
Ai-Da’s works were “ethereal and haunting” and “continue to question where the power of AI will take us, and the global race to harness its power,” he added.
@AIGOD_Aida
A portrait of renowned English mathematician Alan Turing became the first artwork by a humanoid robot to be sold at auction, fetching $1,320,000 on Thursday. the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist,
Three charged in One Direction singer Liam Payne’s death
BUENOS AIRES: Three people have been charged in relation to One Direction singer Liam Payne’s death in a fall from his Buenos Aires hotel balcony last month, Argentine authorities said on Thursday.
The 31-year-old’s death shocked the world, and raised questions about how he had fallen.
A 911 call from a hotel employee the day Payne died warned that he had been acting aggressively and could have been under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
An autopsy revealed the former boy band member had traces of alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he died, a prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Thursday.
Payne’s body was handed over to his father, Geoff, over the weekend and flown back to his native England. Over the past few weeks, Geoff had been seen alongside longtime One Direction bodyguard, Paul Higgins, at the CasaSur hotel where his son died.
Those charged in Payne’s death include a suspected drug dealer, a hotel employee who may have provided Payne with the cocaine and a person who was close to the singer, the authorities said.
All are accused of playing a role in giving Payne the drugs, with the hotel employee accused of giving Payne cocaine at least twice during his stay and the alleged drug dealer believed to have provided it twice more two days before his death.
The person who was visiting with Payne is also charged with “abandonment of a person followed by death,” authorities said.
None of those charged were named, but will be notified and are prohibited from leaving the country, according to the statement.
The investigation into the circumstances of Payne’s death will continue, prosecutors said, adding that they were still trying to unlock the singer’s broken laptop.
Witnesses had told local media that they saw Payne smashing his laptop in the hotel lobby.
