
Some things you just need to press play and watch, or in this case listen to. Go ahead, press play:
What you’re hearing is weather for the blind, a website streaming a constantly changing, never-the-same sound experience. But the really intriguing part is where the sound comes from, and for what purpose.
While an estimated 6.6 million US citizens have some form of visual disability (estimated at 285 million worldwide), and an estimated 1.3 million are legally designated blind, most are still able to perceive enough light to the degree that their circadian rhythm is established by the rise and setting of the sun. However, an estimated 100,000 people suffer total blindness, and of them an estimated 70 percent suffer a condition known as non-24, where one’s circadian clock is unestablished and free-running sleep is often a factor. While that might just sound like a sleeping pattern disorder, non-24 has other serious health side-effects ranging from headaches to lack of muscle control and even hair loss.
All of this might seem insurmountable, but being completely blind doesn’t affect your hearing. For some, the sense of hearing is amplified (think of the portrayal of Kent Cullers in the 1997 film Contact). That’s where the brilliance of weather for the blind comes in.
The brainchild of Quintron, the same maker who many years ago brought us the Drum Buddy, this project went through several iterations before completion last spring while the artist was in residency at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva, Florida. A prototype installation of the project can be seen in the video below, and resembles a contraption you might see in Goonies. Now, the circuits are contained inside a beautiful “base station” enclosure known as Weather Warlock, an all analog synthesizer with sliders and knobs to control output of conditions like rain speed, sun, drone phase, and wind tones.
(Needless to say, I want to hear what my neighborhood sounds like!)
In one installation, the base station was combined with a PVC pipe armature stuck in beach sand, which contained the sensors and resembled common weather vanes and DIY stations. Nowadays the base station is installed at Spellcaster Lodge (aka Quintron’s living room) on St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans’ 9th Ward, with the sensors likely fitted to the house’s exterior.
Having listened to the audio feed for some time now (and compared what I’m hearing to what is shown in the video), I can tell there is partial wind speed with no rain in New Orleans at the moment; glancing at Wunderground’s forecast shows winds gusting up to 12mph with no rain and partial cloud cover, with temperature in the mid 40s. Exactly what I’m hearing.
More base stations could be coming soon. The project’s website reads,
“Another future mission for this endeavor is that more base stations be built around the world so that listeners may experience musical interpretations of a variety of different climates and time zones – from Iceland to the Amazon.”
While not FDA-approved for non-24, weather for the blind at least attempts to acknowledge the issue blind people face in their geography. And it shows how makers and artists creatively think through challenges to construct projects that use sensors to interpret the world around them. From weather to sound, from art to life; if nothing else it’s simply soothing to listen to.
I listened to the stream the entire time I wrote this blog, and yes, it is relaxing.
“Special audio events” occur daily during sunrise and sunset. Those times are available on the project website; New Orleans is located in the Central Time Zone.
If you live near New Orleans, Quintronics will be performing the Weather Warlock live on January 18 at St. Maurice Church in the Lower 9th.
[via Slate]
Yes! More of this please. Weather is only one quantifiable time based data set. Imagine a similar set up feeding off of stock market data, Times Square traffic patterns, Gawker Media’s cross platform web traffic and content generation, CNN vs. Fox News’ data cycle or any number of data sets. Now imagine those data sets tied to real life events. What kind of symphony was lost because no one was monitoring the telecommunications traffic on September 11 with a similar data sonification device? What did the real estate boom and subsequent financial crisis sound like? What if the Twitter output of the Kardashian clan sounds really amazing when it’s run through a similar machine? I hope more folks join Quintron in this project. There are so many data sets waiting for a voice!
In the words of Max Cohen- ‘Restate my assumptions: One, Mathematics is the language of nature. Two,
Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
Three: If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge.
Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The
cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations;
sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock
market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy.
Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming
with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the
stock market, there is a pattern as well… Right in front of me…
hiding behind the numbers. Always has been’
Chuck your stock market mention made me think of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB5jJuMP84E
Sur.real.
that “prototype installation of the project (that) resembles a contraption you might see in Goonies” is actually an old radio audio mixing board. I have a dead one at home waiting for repurposing. Hmmmm, inspiration……
I was referring to the whole installation of funnels & tubes looking something akin to a Rube Goldberg machine, but, I’m glad you’re inspired by whatever you saw in the video to put that mixing board to use! Thanks for reading.