SP Weather Station

Portfolio Launch: 2009 SP Weather Reports

Heidi — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:30:05 +0000

Sunday, August 22nd 4:00 PM
Flux Factory: 39-31 29th Street, Long Island City.
Free and open to the public

The artist-run SP Weather Station, currently based on the roof of Flux Factory, invites you to a release party for its 2009 Weather Report portfolios. Each portfolio in the edition of 30 contains 12 works produced by 12 different artists who were invited to respond to any aspect of one month of SP Weather Station data in any format they desired. Works from the portfolio, including audio, books, drawings, and prints, will be on display in the gallery; the portfolio will also be for sale.

Participating artists include: (January) Mike Estabrook and Vandana Jain; (February) Susan Goethel Campbell; (March) Emily Larned; (April) Luke Strosnider; (May) Andrea Polli; (June) Mark Nystrom; (July) Patricia Zarate; (August) Jane D. Marsching; (September) Stephanie Rothenberg; (October) Graham Parker; (November) Isaac Gertman; (December) Birgit Rathsmann

SP Weather Station is an interdisciplinary project that collects weather data, hosts a Guest Lecture Series, and organizes weather-related publications, events, and exhibitions.

Come see our Water Barometer @ Flux Science Fair

Natalie — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:57:51 +0000

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!

Tomas Saraceno – Cloud Cities

Natalie — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:52:47 +0000

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.

MeteoWorld: A Cool Meteorological Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo

Natalie — Sun, 16 May 2010 10:41:12 +0000

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.”

From the NY Times: A Tale of Two Volcanoes

Natalie — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:31:51 +0000

Published: April 15, 2010

By SIMON WINCHESTER
Sandisfield, Mass.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/opinion/16winchester.html?scp=1&sq=tale%20of%20two%20volcanoes&st=cse

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.

Where Iceland’s volcano has set off a wave of high-technology panic, Java’s event set off something benign and really quite lovely: worldwide displays of light and color that reduced mankind to a state of stunned amazement. Where Iceland has caused shock, Java resulted in awe. And where Eyjafjalla’s ashes seem to have cost millions in lost business, Krakatoa’s dust left the world not just a remarkable legacy of unforgettable art but also spurred a vital discovery in atmospheric science.

The skies in the fall of 1883 became weirdly changed. The moon turned blue, or sometimes green. Firefighters in New York and elsewhere thought they saw distant fires, caused by clouds of boiling dust. The vivid ash-tinged sunsets, and the post-sunset horizon rainbows of purple and passion fruit and salmon-red, were said to be the most memorable.

Painters in particular did their best to capture what they saw. An obscure Londoner named William Ascroft, astonished by the nightly light show along the Thames, turned out a watercolor every 10 minutes, night after night, working like a human camera. More than 500 Krakatoa paintings survive him. “Blood afterglow,” he jotted down on one canvas, noting the magic done by refractive crystals of dust; “Amber afterglow,” on another.

Grander artists, like Frederic Church of the Hudson River School, were spurred to action too. In December, four months after the Javanese blast, Church hurried up from Olana, his Moorish castle near Poughkeepsie, to Lake Ontario, and one perfect evening caught the vivid crepuscular purples over the ice on Chaumont Bay, knowing full well — as science already did — that it was a volcano 10,000 miles away that had painted the sky for him.

And one even more famous painting speaks of Krakatoa as well: recent research suggests that Edvard Munch a decade later painted “The Scream” while remembering a night in Oslo that had been much affected by the volcanic dust. Indeed, the climatic records show that the swirling orange skies behind the terror-stricken face match perfectly those recorded that winter in southern Norway.

It was more than art that resulted from Krakatoa’s outpourings of trillions of tons of fine siliceous ash. It left a lasting effect on science as well.

The heavier dust from Krakatoa slowly fell to earth, coating ships and cities thousands of miles away. But the micron-sized particles from the volcano’s mouth did not fall back at all. Instead, they were carried ever upward, and ended up floating around the world for years, on streams of globe-girdling winds that were not then even known to exist.

Weather-watchers, carefully noting just when certain skies in certain cities were inflamed and colored by the passing high-altitude dust clouds, produced a map showing just how these wind currents moved around the world. The first name they used for the phenomenon was the “equatorial smoke stream.” Today it is, of course, the jet stream — a discovery that remains perhaps the most important legacy of Krakatoa.

It is a legacy that, like the night-sky art, remains somewhat more memorable than the flight-cancellation lists at London’s airports, which will probably be the most lasting public memorial of the little-volcano-that-roared on the southern flank of Iceland.

Simon Winchester is the author of “Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded” and the forthcoming “Atlantic: The Biography of an Ocean.”

SPWS 2009 Report Portfolios under way!

Natalie — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:53:00 +0000

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.

2008 Reports on view: New Prints: Part II work from International Print Center New York

Heidi — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:20:02 +0000

March 8 – April 4, 2010
Reception: Thursday, March 25th from 5-7pm

Meyerson Hall Gallery 210 South 34th Street Philadelphia, PA 19104
Hours: Monday-Friday, 10-5pm

View University of Pennsylvania School of Design press release

Birgit Rathsmann, “Room for Storms”

Natalie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:28:26 +0000

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.

2/19/10: SPWS in HOUSEBROKEN @ Flux Factory

Natalie — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:56:03 +0000

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.

Full details…

Join us on Friday, February 19th for Housebroken, Flux’s inaugural show! In celebration of our newest home, we’ve invited dozens upon dozens of artists to create works throughout the building. Housebroken is easily our biggest project ever, with over 100 installations, performances, and homey additions to our factory. Eclectic performances and unparalleled reverie begin at 8 pm, continuing on into the night.

Curated by Jean Barberis and Georgia Muenster

Participating artists: Carey Ascenzo; Ali Aschman; Man Bartlett; Ranjit Bhatnagar; David Bohl & David Kagan; Brandstifter; Adam Brent; Matt Bua; Paul Burn; Ian Burns; Lucille Calmel; Paula Castro; Cyprien Chabert; Gabriel Cohen & Megan Snowe; David Court & Carolyn Lambert; The Deterritorialized Church; Kerry Downey; Jason Eppink; Cassandra Ferland & Boyd Shropshire; Tracy Gilman, David Schleifer & Lauren Silberman; Nick Golebiewski & Marin Tockman; Eckart Graeve; Kathryn Hamilton; Amy Lynn Herman; Peter Hristoff; Thom Hutchison; Jaime Iglehart; Doreen Jakob; Anna Lise Jensen; Benjamin Johnson/BADSTUDIO & Hiroko Takeda; Darren Jones & Ryan Roa; Jack Kalish & Katie Westgate; Bernard Klevickas; George Kroenert; Sara Krugman; Elizabeth Larison; Fabienne Lasserre; Matt Levy; Michelle Levy; Amy Longenecker & Christopher Ulivo; Nelson Loskamp; Caroline Mak; Greg Martin; Lili Maya & James Rouvelle; Olive McKeon; Ian Montgomery; Martina Mrongovius; Georgia Muenster; Jo Q. Nelson; Nick Normal; Issa Nyaphaga; Adrian Owen; Molly Page; Clare Parry; Douglas Paulson; Damon Pelletier & Chess Venis; SKOTE; Brendan Ravenhill; Annie Reichert and Etosha Terryll; Rob Rhee; John Roach; Eugenia Semjonova; Igor Siddiqui; Julia Solis; SP Weather Station; Jeff Stark; Josh Thorpe; Gabriela Vainsencher; Hein Verwer; Barbara Westermann; Meng-Hsuan Wu; Chin Chih Yang

With DJ Taliesin and Mosholu Park with video art by NES.Avi

AND a special performance by White Limo

Suggested donation, $15 (tax-deductible)
Open bar courtesy of Campari, 21+
Please rsvp to rsvp@fluxfactory.org

Housebroken will remain on view every Saturday and Sunday from 12 – 6 pm until March 21st.

6 More Weeks of Winter Predicted

Natalie — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:23:18 +0000

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.