In the hands of a talented ice artist, a massive block of frozen water transforms into working musical instruments, full-scale vehicles and entire life-sized villages. In fact, ice can be used in imaginative and sometimes strange ways – as jewelry, boats that (sort of) float and even lenses that can start fires. Check out these 20 cool and unusual ice creations.
Musical Instruments
(images via: oddity central)
Norwegian percussionist Terje Isungset not only carves full-scale musical instruments out of ice, but actually plays them. The artist and musician began making instruments out of natural materials like birch and slate, but now specializes in ‘ice music’ using a guitar, a harp, a trumpet, a fiddle and chimes.
Boat Made of Ice and Wood
(images via: oddity central)
Pykrete – a mixture of wood pulp and ice – may be bulletproof, but it’s not the most practical material for a boat. It was theorized that this material could be used to build unsinkable boats because of its slow melting rate. The BBC show Bang Goes the Theory spent three weeks making a pykrete boat and tested it out in a harbor, but it immediately began sinking. Mythbusters conducted a similar experiment stateside, with near-identical results; they found the theory “plausible but ludicrous.”
Ice Hotels
(images via: hoteldeglace-canada, icehotel, kirkenessnowhotel.com, sorrisniva.no)
Sleeping on a block of ice in a room entirely made of the same material may not sound like the most comfortable experience ever, but thousands of people flock to ice hotels around the world just to try it. Ice hotels including Quebec’s Hotel de Glace, Sweden’s IceHotel, the Kirkenes Snow Hotel in Finland and the Sorrisniva in Norway offer a bone-chilling night in a building where nearly everything including cafe tables, the reception desk, the ceilings and even the chandeliers are made of ice.