open-Weather
Open-weather is a feminist experiment in imaging and imagining the Earth and its weather systems using DIY community tools. Co-led by Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann, open-weather encompasses a series of how-to guides, critical frameworks and public workshops on the reception of satellite images using free or inexpensive amateur radio technologies. In the tradition of intersectional feminism, open-weather investigates the politics of location and interlocking oppressions that shape our capacities to observe, negotiate, and respond to the climate crisis. In doing so, open-weather challenges dominant representations of Earth and the environment, while complicating ideas of the weather beyond the meteorological. Learn more: https://open-weather.community/
DIY Satellite Ground Stations on the Isle of Mull, Scotland. open-weather CC BY 4.0
How did the project begin? On May 2-3 2020, the day of the international dawn chorus, Sasha and Sophie performed Open Work, Second Body in conversation with author Daisy Hildyard during the 24-hour radio broadcast of Reveil 2020 supported by the Soundcamp network. The open-weather wiki page on Public Lab was launched in June 2020 and featured the DIY Satellite Ground Station guide, which was replicated by over thirty people in its first few months and was reviewed in leading amateur radio blogs and podcasts. In September 2020 the open-weather.community web platform was launched to host an audio-visual archive of weather images and to build the open-weather network. The first open-weather nowcast occurred on September 6th 2020 and featured contributions from thirteen DIY Satellite Ground stations. In November 2020, Sophie and Sasha published the open-weather feminist handbook. Open-weather has been featured in numerous exhibitions and public programmes, lectures and published texts. The project has also has held artistic residencies at Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Poland and Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany.
Open Work, Second Body by open-weather with Daisy Hildyard for Reveil 2020 (curated by Soundcamp). open-weather CC BY 4.0
Open-weather nowcast for COP26 on 31st Oct 2021. Explore here: https://cop26-nowcast.open-weather.community/ open-weather CC BY 4.0
Open-weather nowcast on September 6th 2020. Contributions from: Audrey Briot; Sofia Caferri; Sophie Dyer M6NYX; Sasha Engelmann M6IOR; Steve Engelmann; Joaquin Ezcurra; Jacques Gentil; Bill Liles NQ6Z; L. Paul Verhage KD4STH; Yoshiki Matsuoka JF1SAG; Ankit Sharma; Zack Wettstein; WXVids; open-weather CC BY 4.0
Satellite Séance: an open-weather performance exploring the embodiment of weather forecasting. Satellite séances involve live electromagnetic experimentation and decoding images of weather systems via polar-orbiting NOAA satellites. These operations are entangled with readings from literatures of séance and mesmerism. One of the first Satellite Séances (pictured above) was performed by Sasha Engelmann on 12th July 2019 in the shadow of the GCHQ operated “Listening Station” in Bude, Cornwall, where civilian data is captured and stored through internet probes, and the NSA-GCHQ collaborative interception of satellite downlinks over the Atlantic; Photo by Matthew Philips
Satellite Séance by open-weather on November 9th, 2019 at the ‘Air Matters’ symposium, Waterman’s Art Centre, UK. open-weather CC BY 4.0
An image transmitted by NOAA 18 traveling South at 49 degrees West, May 17th 2020, 11-34 British Standard Time. open-weather CC BY 4.0
Radio Pedagogies: Open-weather frequently stage workshops for students, artists and the public. These have included DIY Satellite Ground Station workshops at Royal Holloway University of London; the Royal College of Art, London; the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University; Kassel Art and Design, Germany; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany; Wagenhallen Kunstverein, Germany; Onassis Stegi, Athens, Greece; The Photographer’s Gallery, London; Sonic Acts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
DIY Satellite Ground Station Workshop at Wagenhallen Kunstverein, Stuttgart in September 2020. Eight participants worked to build their own DIY Satellite Ground Stations, while engaging with feminist ideas of embodiment, sensing and responsability. open-weather CC BY 4.0
Satellite Séance and satellite imaging workshop by open-weather for ADS7 Politics of the Air Studio at the Royal College of Art, 21st January 2020. Photograph by Marco Ferrari.
Collaborative Writing: open-weather write, draft and edit text together. This includes research articles, performance texts, scripts and spoken word poems. Recent written works include Open-weather: speculative feminist propositions for planetary images in an era of climate crisis; When we image the earth, we imagine another; The Lore of the Radio Fossil and Open Work, Second Body.
Our first coauthored publication, Lore of the Radio Fossil, is a script and essay that tells the speculative story of a ‘radio fossil’: a radio-borne image that traverses the bounds of Earth’s surfaces, elements, atmospheres and techno-geographies. The story itself is a technique for attuning to a parallel wireless world, an electromagnetic commons, in the aim of witnessing the radio Anthropocene. Read find the full text and accompanying sound archive here: http://temporaryartreview.com/lore-of-the-radio-fossil/
Image: Radio frequency interference. Source: radiojove.org/SUG/RFI/RFI.html