Weather Gauge
John Thomson and Alison Craighead
Weather Gauge is an artwork that uses live numerical weather data from over 150 countries. It shows temperature, time and location in cyclical rotations, creating a proliferation of digitized information on screen.
Creative contribution
What was the significant innovation in approach or thinking behind the project/artwork? How can this be recognisably attributed to the involvement of creative practice?
Weather Gauge is produced exclusively with widely accessible online technologies (the web). It offers viewers an unusual extended sense of context beyond their own physical location and the location of the work. The amateur approach to technology in this instance allows for a focus on the aesthetic qualities of the piece as apposed to complex technological processes.
The piece is produced using the amateur skills and aesthetics of the artists, putting live data to a unique and unusual use.
Collaboration
What were the disciplinary contributors to the project? What model of research / development was followed? What were factors leading to success / problems?
Thomson and Craighead have made a number of artworks using live data including "template cinema online artworks" and gallery installations, where networked films are created in real time.
The artists research question “focused on using virtual live data as a material or medium for producing an artwork. The methodology is informed by their wider artistic practice and ongoing research into making artworks out of live data.” Thomson and Craighead (written response to this survey)
Values
What were the outcomes of the project? How were these disseminated to outside stakeholders? What models of value are implied by this project? What was the Impact of the work?
The project was initially exhibited in 2003 at the Bitparts exhibition at FACT in Liverpool, then at Arcade exhibition in London and the 9th New Media Festival in Japan in 2006.
The work has been exhibited both as a live projection in a gallery space and as an online artwork at http://www.thomson-craighead.net/weather_gauge/.
