Threshold - An experimental music video inspired by the sea-ice research of Dr Tokoholo Rampai.

Threshold is a four-minute experimental song and music video written by songwriter Senna-Marie at FicSci 03 in 2024 (Convened by Mehita Iqani and Dr Wamuwi Mbao) and inspired by the research of South African Antarctic sea-ice scientist Dr Tokolo Rampai. The project explores both personally vulnerable and ecologically critical questions, asking after what threshold is the writer inspired, the water made solid, the climax reached, and the boundary breached. 

Senna-Marie’s song was sparked by Dr. Rampai’s research in the Marginal Zone where sea-ice forms a floating ecosystem homing phytoplankton in its brine channels and mirroring the sun’s heat back into space. For Senna-Marie, Antarctic expeditions double as metaphor for the creative process: a voyage into the unknown. 

The music video was directed by theatre-maker Nicola Pilkington and traces boundary lines: archival footage of expeditions intercut with the vulnerability of physical gestures, echoing the precision of scientific experiment and the intimacy of Senna-Marie’s singing. In one sequence, an Icebreaker angles through fields of ice juxtaposed by a close-up needle piercing into skin; drawing parallels between the failure mechanics of the ship’s maneuvers through sea-ice and the penetration of the bodily boundary. Screened over the lyric: 

Can we doctor this? 

Can we Doctor? 

Another lyric, “Is this what it takes to throw up a storm and spit the salt,” touches on brine channels, sea-sickness and the Western Cape storms shaped by changes in Antarctic sea-ice. Completing the verse, “Is this what it takes to agitate against and to revolt” extends this into the socio-political tensions that shape treaties and public imagination. 

Produced by Prof. Mehita Iqani (NRF South African Research Chair in Science Communication) Threshold forms part of a broader effort to stimulate public imagination around South Africa’s role in Antarctica. Having recently presented the work at MARiS, SCAR and the SANAP Symposium, sharing Threshold at the World Biodiversity Forum is part of recognising different ways of knowing: approaching climate research through the power of song in alignment with the IPBES Transformative Change Assessment’s call for creativity, imagination and knowledge co-creation.