Weather System Project: Water State Sketch

Weather System Project: Water State Sketch v.1.3

Dr Sarah Waterson

The project presented here is a sketch to develop generative water states that are mapped to sound data and is part of a larger ongoing data mapping and visualisation investigation. In oceanography, sea state is the general condition of the free surface on a large body of water—with respect to wind waves and swell—at a certain location and moment. A sea state is described through wave height, period, and spectrum data. This sketch uses audio composed by mapping weather data to modular synths, and then remapping that audio back to generate the wave height, period, and spectrum in the generative system. The ambition for this practice led research is to contribute to weath- er visualisation methods by building on the Beaufort Scale (developed in1805 to help sailors estimate the winds via visual observations) and to develop an immersive experience of that data. This project was developed using Reaktor, Touch Designer and AccuWeather data.

Gallery

Sarah Waterson is a new media artist, designer and senior lecturer in interactive design, whose work deals with the influence of electronic technologies on subjectivities and how design as a discipline can inform practice and inter-disciplinary collaboration/s. Over the past twenty years she has exhibited interactive environments nationally and internationally. Recent interactive installations have included: Laika’s Derive (Carriageworks 2010), 33ºSouth – a three-channel audio-visual installation that juxtaposes the cities of Sydney (Australia) and Santiago (Chile) using a custom made data mapping system and database (collaboration with Juan Francisco Salazar), trope, a new writing project developed for the Second Life environment (SWF 08), subscapePROOF, a custom made data mapping system (collaboration with Kate Richards, Australian Centre for the Moving Image 04/05), and subscapeBALTIC (collaboration with Kate Richards, ISEA2004). Her recent publications include a book Chapter in collaboration with Dr Juan Francisco Salazar: Play _Space; Conceptualizing Interactive Media for Community Participation. Danny Butt, Jonathan Bywater (eds) PLACE: Local Knowledge and New Media Practice, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008. Her current interests include data mapping, data ecologies and embodied media. Waterson is a senior lecturer at the School of Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Australia.