Weather Glass or Crystal Ball?

Mapping the weather in art and science.

 

The invention of the crystal ball as well as of the weather glass are expressions of human curiosity and of the need to understand and to predict environmental conditions. They are two ways of investigating the world around us, both of them aiming to open up life and the world, and both of them conveying a story about the interconnection of art and science.

Scientists and artists capturing the weather – this is one of the elements that this project builds on. An approach that also takes into consideration historical pictures telling us about weather conditions in former times and about traces of the human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. And yet, it is also a project about contemporary conversations about contemporary weather, and about the urgency of re:understanding and re:enforcing that there is no life without weather and there is no living without climate.

Weather Glass or Crystal Ball?  is a research project designed to take place in Glasgow, Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm with the aim of setting up an interdisciplinary laboratory to investigate how we experience and communicate about weather and climate change.

 

Weather Glass or Crystal Ball? is a research project funded and designed by Goethe Institute and curated by LABLAB.

 

Conversations about weather through hackathons

The hackathons should be considered as an interdisciplinary science and artistic research process which investigates how we relate or un-relate to weather. Do we fully understand that the extreme weather conditions we are experiencing depend on climate change? If so, how do we express this connection and can it be done by relating data on weather and climate with art? These hackathons are about exploring the potentials of creating a close and critical dialogue between art and science.

 

 

Key questions for the hackathon

Why do we communicate about the weather?

How do we communicate about the weather?

Why predicting the weather?

How do we predict it?

Feelings

Images

Sound

Stories

Data

How do we relate to weather conditions and changes in an urban context and a rural context?

What kind of historical and contemporary data can be used in order to visualise weather conditions and climate change?

 

 

The sense boxes

The senseBox is a do-it-yourself toolkit for stationary and mobile sensor stations and digital education in STEM subjects. It is available as senseBox:home – a weather station for citizen science, and senseBox:edu – a hardware set used in universities, schools and in private education. Both sets consist of a microcontroller, several sensors (e.g. temperature, air pressure, air quality etc.) and a gateway (e.g. WiFi, LoRa etc.) to upload measurements to the online platform openSenseMap.

 

 

Program 2020 – 2021

Hackathon session nr 1: Glasgow, 12.-13. November 2020

Hackathon session nr 2: Oslo Spring 2021

Artistic Research: Spring 2021 – Fall 2021

Final Symposium: Stockholm Fall 2021

 

 

Themes

Strategic and Environmental Communication