Two Weekends: June 5-6/12-13, 12-6 PM
Science Fair @ Flux Factory
39-21 29th Street, Long Island City
Featuring a WATER BAROMETER
by SP Weather Station in collaboration with Daniel Robie
The first barometer wasn’t invented to measure air pressure. In the 17th century, columns of water were used to disprove the church’s position that a true vacuum was impossible. What people found (eventually) is that water can only be raised about 33 feet from the ground with any suction pump. Galileo’s protege Evangelista Torricelli realized that such a column could be used to measure changes in the air. He also realized that a much denser fluid, such as mercury, registers those changes on a much smaller (more scientifically convenient) scale.
Who needs convenience? At Flux Factory for the first two weekends in June, SPWS and Dan Robie, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, York College, CUNY, are measuring pressure with a tube of water the height of Flux Factory, in homage to the barometer’s history. Come find out if it works!
Tomás Saraceno / Cloud Cities
Atelier Calder
19 June – 4 July 2010
12 Route du Carroi
F-37190 Saché, France
http://www.atelier-calder.com/
More info on e-flux:
Over the course of his residency at the Atelier Calder, 2009 Calder Prize laureate Tomás Saraceno has continued to develop his project Cloud Cities-Air Port City, a proposed use of space that empowers individuals, repositioning them beyond the confines of existing authoritative constructs. Saraceno describes the project as: “a structure that seeks to challenge today’s political, social, cultural and military restrictions in an attempt to reestablish new concepts of synergy. Up in the sky there will be this cloud, a habitable platform that floats in the air, changing form and merging with other platforms, just as clouds do. It will fly through the atmosphere pushed by the winds, both local and global, in an attempt to equalize the (social) temperature and differences in pressure.”
The opening celebration for “Cloud Cities” will take place on 19 – 20 June 2010, with an experimentation of a solar balloon flight on Sunday morning from 5:00 – 7:00, weather permitting. The Atelier Calder will be open to visitors on subsequent weekends from 14:00 – 18:00, and other days by appointment, until 4 July 2010.
Guest post from SPWS friend and 2010 Weather Interpreter Tim Dye:
On the banks of the Huangpu River, MeteoWorld showcases the weather community’s technological accomplishments. It’s the first-ever pavilion for the weather community and a really cool place if you’re a weather and technology geek.
Its cloud-like roof mists, sending a cooling rain on visitors who spend over an hour waiting in Shanghai’s scorching sun to enter this atmospheric wonder land. Upon entering the cloud, you’re treated to meteorological accomplishments of the last 100 years – in weather soundings, radar, satellite, and television weather.
It begins with a cute 3-D movie of two cloud-droplet cartoon characters who venture through the water cycle. Next up is an 8-ft globe showing satellite movies taken from weather satellites. All sorts of weather instruments and pictures chronicle the past century of meteorological technical achievements. Last, you can participate in a television weather broadcast and become a TV forecaster for a minute.
The 2010 Shanghai World Expo is like Disney’s Epcot Center on steroids. It covers over 1,300 acres and expects over 70 million visitors. Expo pavilions showcase countries from North Korea to New Zealand and technology from Cisco to the Chinese Railroad Association.
MeteoWorld was sponsored by the Chinese Meteorological Association, the World Meteorological Association, and the Group on Earth Observations.”
Published: April 15, 2010
By SIMON WINCHESTER
Sandisfield, Mass.
IN planetary terms, it was just a tiny pinprick that opened up last month underneath the Eyjafjalla Glacier in southern Iceland, when a long-forgotten volcano started to erupt again after a quiescence of nearly 200 years. But insignificant though the rent in the planet’s fabric may have been, uncounted millions have been suddenly affected by it.
The North Atlantic winds shifted by just a few degrees, and all of a sudden commercial catastrophe has been visited on northern Europe: air traffic peremptorily shut down, the skies cleared of planes wary of flying through the high-altitude streams of the volcano’s brutally corrosive airborne silica dust.
The last time the world was so mightily affected in this way was in 1883, when a similarly tiny vent in the earth’s surface opened up on the island of Krakatoa, between Java and Sumatra, in what is now Indonesia. Some 40,000 people died because of that eruption — it was a much more fierce event, and in a much more populated place. But the clouds of dust that cascaded upward into the stratosphere affected the entire planet for the rest of the year on the same scale — except that the effects themselves were of a profoundly different kind. Read more »
As of yesterday, we’re 90% of the way to collating and boxing the 2009 SP Weather Reports! The folio for 2009 will include works by: Mike Estabrook & Vandana Jain (January); Susan Goethel Campbell (February); Emily Larned (March); Luke Strosnider (April); Andrea Polli (May); Mark Nystrom (June); Patricia Zarate (July); Jane D. Marsching (August); Stephanie Rothenberg (September); Graham Parker (October); Isaac Gertman (November); and Birgit Rathsmann (December).
Thanks to Dale Inglett and the folks at the Alfred BAFA program for sharing space with us this weekend… and stay tuned, we hope to make them available soon.
Birgit Rathsmann, artist and 2009 SPWS Weather Interpreter (December) is presenting work in a temporary space at 163 Eldridge.
Upcoming:
Sunday, February 28th, 2010, 4PM and 5PM
Fronts
A performance by Ryan McNamara + Birgit Rathsmann
A weather forecaster shaman seeds and unleashes a human storm.
Featuring Kim Brandt, Samara Davis, Jack Ferver, Miriam Katz and Bevin McNamara
163 Eldridge Street near Delancey
On February 20th, Birgit created a one-night cinema to screen HurSeas08.mov, a looped and altered version of an NOAA video that condenses satellite imagery from the 2008 hurricane season, combining it with various soundtracks (of music both commissioned and found). Presented with video introductions by Hollis Witherspoon impersonating Werner Herzog, Birgit’s project has a peculiar blend of romanticism and irony.
With help from numerous Flux-ers (thanks Nick, Ian, Jean, Georgia, et al) the SPWS base station has been installed in a library-nook at Flux Factory in time for their inaugural group show, HOUSEBROKEN.
Please join us Friday February 19th, 8pm-12am – check the local conditions, browse the library, see work by 40 artists…
Flux Factory
39-31 29th Street, LIC, NY 11101
Suggested donation $15
Please rsvp to rsvp@fluxfactory.org
Housebroken will remain on view every Saturday and Sunday from 12 – 6 pm until March 21st.
Read more »
In lieu of functioning data uploads, SPWS is relying non-digital weather sensing technologies.
Punxsutawney Phil Video
Phil’s prediction was also made available this year via SMS, by texting “Groundhog” to 247365 by Groundhog Day.
Thanks to Liz for the suggestion.
Those who avidly follow the live uploads of SPWS data on PWS Weather and Weather Underground may have noticed something funny in recent weeks. Following a string of technical glitches, the station was hit by a piece of flying debris and the flow of data has stopped until our team can devise a solution.
For the time being, check out the weather data on nearby Roosevelt Island?
In other weather-news: Hans Haacke’s first solo exhibition in a New York institution since 1986, “Weather, or not” is on view for TWO MORE DAYS only at X-Initiative.
SPWS 2008 Weather Reports on view in:
New Prints 2010/Winter
International Print Center New York
526 West 26th Street, Rm.824
Between 10th and 11th Avenues
New York, New York, 10001
http://www.ipcny.org/exhib/exhib_np/edit_np_w10/w10_pr.html
On View: January 12 – February 20, 2010
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 14, 6-8 pm
Featuring works by Leah Beeferman, Natalie Campbell, Carrie Dashow, Neil Freeman, Richard Garrison, Michael Geminder, Katarina Jerinic, Daniel Larson, Bridget Lewis, Lize Mogel, Heidi Neilson, Chris Petrone, Sarah Nicole Phillips, Jing Yu, and Liz Zanis
DIY reportage, Department of Prediction, art-exhibit/artist, local environment, popular meteorology | Natalie | 
June 3, 2010 5:57 am | 
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