weatherviz
The old line goes “Everybody complains about the weather but no one does anything about it.” We’re doing something about this state of affairs. Our art and technology project, called weatherviz, captures and makes visible a small slice of the river of meteorological data that surrounds us. It is an automated system that downloads weather information from the Internet and uses robotics to drive a large kinetic sculpture. It also animates a constantly – changing computer visualization. The whole production will ultimately be viewable over the Internet.
using weather imagery to drive sculpture and computer animation
Weatherviz extends meteorilogical imagery seen on TV and the Internet. It takes weather data and expresses it as movement in a kinetic sculpture. Weatherviz sculpture and media animations play back interpretations of very recent weather events from a selection of 150 locations monitored by NOAA’s National Weather Service in the territorial United States.
Weatheviz captures and animates four regularly sampled meteorological factors for each geographic locale; temperature, wind, precipitation and total weather energy. NOAA weather stations span nearly half the globe: west to east, from Guam, in the Pacific, to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; north to south, from Barrow, Alaska to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Demonstrations are slated for later this Summer in Seattle and during the Fall in Washington, DC. When visitors view the outdoor weatherviz sculpture, an electronic crawl accompanying it will identify the weather station and sampling date. Figuring out which components of the sculpture and data visualization match each other for a weather event will be part of the fun and mystery of the installation.
Stay tuned for more weatherviz info as the project reaches the demonstration stage.