Weather Tunnel Project, Translife Triennial

As part of the Weather Tunnel Project at Translife Triennial in Beijing, China, two works from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne are shown: Blind Spots by Susanna Schoenberg and the Solar Wind Periscope by Jonas Hansen and › Lasse Scherffig.

Blind Spots investigates self-awareness and self-consciousness from a constructivist perspective. Using data from environmental sensors of the Weather Tunnel Project, Blind Spots projects images into which that data has been inscribed while at the same time trying to systemize and hence “understand” the data and their history by means of statistics.

The Solar Wind Periscope is an optical instrument to watch space weather: it makes visible the solar wind’s influence on the ionosphere. To do so, it listens to a global network of HAM radio stations called WSPRNET. From this network, the locations of the stations that currently reach the Weather Tunnel in Beijing are obtained. Since HF radio bounces off the ionosphere if solar wind conditions are appropriate, HF signal range correlates with solar wind conditions and the radio receiver can be used to listen into space weather. The results of this process are fused with the image of a rotating camera, yielding an image of the local surroundings of the Weather Tunnel in conjunction with space weather above.

The Weather Tunnel Project is a global initiative that is part of the Translife Triennial at the National Art Museum of China. It is “envisioned as a translocal, participatory, interventionist component of the international media art exhibition” and collects pieces that deal with climate, weather and environmental issues. It is organized by Tshingua University (China) and brings together projects from Tshingua University, KHM, Arizona State University (USA), Art Center Nabi (South Korea) , Curtin University (Australia), Parsons The New School for Design (USA) and V2_lab (Netherlands).

See also The New York Times: A Beijing Exhibition on Art for the ‘Post-Human Era’