This exhibition from Critical Zone Observatory speculates on the personalities, relationships and experiences of the sensors that make up a weather station. We experience our environment not just with our five human senses but also with the mechanical sensors that act as extensions to our own bodies. These sensors gather massive amounts of data on the Earth’s climate and provide a networked global context for our local experience. However, these mechanical sensors are not the pure machines of reason and hard facts that their chromed steel and grey plastic might suggest, they also carry the bias, emotion, hopes and dreams of their human makers.


Through animation, mechanical climate sensors voice the accounts of couples discussing their experience of weather: how it affects their mood, social life, eating habits and holidays. The sculptures propose new designs for weather stations influenced by the existential drama of our climate. These characters suggest a blurring of the boundary between human senses and mechanical sensors. Together with a newly commissioned mural for the outside of the gallery created in partnership with street artist Roo, the artworks explore the potential for the machines that we use to measure our environment, to also become a handle on the incomprehensibly massive object that is our global climate. In re-evaluating the aesthetics of the weather station, we can hope to devise new, entangled relationships between humans, machines and our atmosphere.


Artist and lecturer Harry Meadows leads Critical Zone Observatory, a research framework exploring the sculptural possibilities for imagining environmental sensors not as benign scientific apparatus but as machines imbued with human bias and emotion. The framework creates partnerships of artists, musicians and scientists to work creatively with climate data. Harry Meadows is senior lecturer in Fine Art at Arts University Bournemouth and a PhD candidate with CREAM at the University of Westminster.


Artists Website:

https://www.criticalzoneobservatory.com


Street Artist ROO:

https://www.artbyroo.com/

︎
Calypo Spritz
Artist, Animator, Music

https://calypospritz.com/

︎
Cursor Video
3D animation, technical design, projection

https://www.cursor.video/

︎
Megan Broadmeadow
Artist, VR filmaker, Propmaker

http://www.meganbroadmeadow.com/

>
Pedro Mealha
Designer / Maker

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/pedromealha