"They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?"
- Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

Berlin artist Carsten Nicolai shares Jeanette Winterson's passion for the snowflake's infinite variation.

Nicolai has designed a harshly lit laboratory environment filled with carefully designed copper, steel and glass implements which allow visitors to develop snow crystals within individual cylinders in the exhibition space.

Nicolai's paintings of snow crystal formations at different temperatures will line the walls - referencing the photo documentation of Japanese Physicist Ukichiro Nakaya's experiments with artificial snow in the 1930s - while the inaudible sounds of the crystals developing are evoked by a track of his ambient electronic music, suggesting the crackling of ice in formation.

Nicolai's interest in the scientific processes that escape our natural perception - microscopic, invisible, or inaudible - forms the basis of much of his work. He often transforms the patterns of these processes through different media such as image to sound or sound to matter, manifesting and amplifying these processes through experiments within the museum space.

In snow�noise, his interest lies in the randomness of the development of the snowflake and the uniqueness of the detail of each -- beyond the basic categories of formation. He uses the snow crystal as a means to reflect on the importance of random processes as the source of singularity.

An interactive website project designed by Nicolai in collaboration with the visual effects and post-production company Animal Logic (The Matrix and Moulin Rouge), combined image and sound from the exhibition with new interactive pieces designed by the artist specifically for display on the website.