Each year the World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, Alaska, uses tons of ice to create breathtaking works of art. It takes the handy work of an army of dedicated volunteers to cut the ice from a local pond.
A clever Fairbanks filmmaker decided to shoot the process from the point of view of the ice. Eric Muehling, an app developer specializing in interactive multimedia, strapped an underwater GoPro to the forklift that moves the ice from the pond after it's been scraped free of snow and sliced by chainsaw into smaller blocks. Some of the blocks weigh up to 4,000 pounds and must to sit for several days to acclimate to the temperature before they can be carved. Up to 1,000 blocks are harvested from local ponds before the competition begins. For the festival's single-block competition, the blocks are 5 by 8 feet; for the multiblock competition, they're 4 by 6 feet. The blocks are as tall as the ice is thick -- some 30 inches this year.
The World Ice Art Championships started in 1988, and today the competition features 70 teams from around the world. It runs through March 30, 2014.