“On Clouds” @ Observatory, Brooklyn / SPWS Lecture 10/21/09

On Clouds

Observatory, Brooklyn
543 Union Street (at Nevins)
Through November 15th
featuring a Guest Lecture by SPWS on 10/21, 8pm!

In the first exhibition at Observatory, Brooklyn, on view through November 15th, James Walsh presents photos and prints in conjunction with an evening program of projections, performances, poetry, and other events by various artists throughout the run of the show.

James’ thoughtfully installed work includes a series of letterpress prints based on John Ruskin’s journals, paired with photographs of details of cloud-painting taken from dioramas in the American Museum of Natural History.  In both, he considers how recording the clouds is an act of both ‘objective’ study and ‘subjective’ projection.

In conjunction with his show, James has invited a number of artists to reflect on this theme (in forms as varied and elusive as the clouds themselves!). In the gallery, Jen Bervin presents a spread from her book a non-breaking space. A series of evening events has included a reading by Joshua Beckman (we were invited to bring pillows; Joshua read texts by himself and others as we lay outstretched, eyes on the ceiling); a lecture by Klara Hobza (a tour through modern cloud classification, with lots of pictures, and a summary of current cloud-making practice); and a slideshow of work by Pauline Curnier Jardin and Catriona Shaw (with excerpts of their work-in-progress, a cloud-opera).

SPWS is happy to be participating:
October 21st, 8pm:

“Taxonomy of Taxonomy of Clouds,” an SPWS lecture in conjunction with:
a performative lecture by Madeline Djerejian + screenings of videos by Celeste Fichter, Birgit Rathsmann, James Walsh and Lisa Young / $5 suggested donation

Save the date, and some resources

Save the date: October 19
The next SPWS Guest Lecture will be Andrea Polli. Andrea is an artist, currently on the faculty in the MFA Program in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College and a resident at Eyebeam. In addition to numerous projects related to weather and climate, Andrea has installed weather stations on the roof at Eyebeam and at her home in Long Island City.

Also:
those in LIC should check out her Cloud Car test drive TOMORROW, September 19th, late afternoon, on the street at the corner of 21st St. and 43rd Ave.

Also:
Thanks to Andrea we also recently had a chance to meet a number of “local experts” at Eyebeam, several of whom have websites of interest to the SPWS community. Featured speakers were Tim Dye of AirNow and Victoria Vesna of the UCLA Art/Science Center. An assortment of artists, environmental activists, etc provided feedback on each others’ work and created a forum for research sharing, raising all kinds of questions to be addressed … in later blog posts.

(Tim Dye)
real time air quality data & visualizations courtesy of the US Government
http://www.airnow.gov/
www.airnowgateway.org

(Sarah Williams)
air quality measurements in Beijing during the Olympics
& visualizationswww.spatialinformationdesignlab.org
NY Times infographics

(Michael Heimbinder)
environmental health justice org. and mapping project in NYC
www.habitatmap.org

(Eve Mosher)public art projects
seedingthecity.org
www.highwaterline.org

Meeting – Jan 13th

SP Weather Station Meeting Minutes
13 January 2008

Present: Natalie Campbell, Kim Fisher, Dan Larson, Heidi Neilson

Proceedings:
-Meeting called to order 11:45 a.m. by general agreement

-Meeting agenda to follow ‘SP Weather Station Thoughts + Planning’ ad hoc memo-list distributed by Heidi to collaborators in days prior to meeting

-Item 1. Wind Sock. Necessity agreed upon, decision to extend design and fabrication commission to Carissa Carman. Subcommittee headed by Natalie to extend commission invite.

-Item 2. Website. Natalie to do some rewrite/editing of ‘about’ section. Heidi to put up some recently taken pictures. Tour of wordpress given to Dan. Weather data format discussed, agreed to have complete data available as an excel spreadsheet, and monthly data set apart and available as graphs in PDF format. Dates in data to be converted to consecutive days within year for ease in graphing. New data to be posted to ‘data’ section roughly monthly and thus available for download. Generally website open for population by posts, links, observations, comments, etc.

-Item 3. Reports. Heidi, possibly Dan to create report for Jan. Invitation to some other participants.

-Item 3a. Dissemination of Reports. Agreed that reports should be in an edition of at least 50, where 20 are set aside for complete year sets, some of the remaining portion go to the artist, the rest are sold/distributed-by-donation (or something) online. PDFs of reports available for free online. ‘Subscription’ system put on hold for feasibility reassessment in 6 mo.-12 mo.

-Item 4. Talk by invited independent weather station guy Kyle. Dan to extend invitation/scheduling, tentatively for Feb 17. Other invites: potential future collaborators, Mike-the-Roosevelt-Island-station guy. Dress code recommendation for talk: fuzzy hoods

-Item 5. Expansion of Weather Station Awesomeness. Metabulator graphing function fixed—Dan looking into. Lightning Detector—Dan to contact Ithaca guy. List of items of interest to approach Materials for the Arts—Heidi to head up acquisition subcommittee.

-Item 6. Long-term weather station expansion ideas to be revisited 6-12 mo.

-Item 7. Timeline. January, flesh out website. Invite/schedule a couple of artists for late winter/spring Reports, and maybe give them tours of the Station. February + March, produce first report or reports, put up on website. Rejoice. Visit Materials for the Arts. April, evaluate previous months, plan forward.

-other business: Noted that meeting and perusal of weather station itself could happen periodically, and that these meetings could be brief (due to weather—it was pointed out that the inside temperature of Station is about 45 degrees F on average).

-Meeting adjourned at 12:45 p.m.
-Minutes submitted by Heidi Neilson