Forecast
Factory
A
project that reflects on weather histories and envisions
future weather scenarios.
"After so much hard
reasoning, may one play with fantasy? Imagine a large
hall like a theatre, except that the circles and galleries
go right round through the space usually occupied by
the stage. The walls of this chamber are painted to
form a map of the globe. The ceiling represents the
north polar regions, England is in the gallery, the
tropics in the upper circle, Australia on the dress
circle and the Antarctic in the pit. A myriad of computers
are at work upon the weather….”
--Lewis Fry Richardson, Weather Prediction by Numerical Process
(1922)
Imagine algae-stained polar bears in air conditioning; palm
trees in Grimsby; tornados in London. Imagine Antarctica in
the pits, the seas on the ceiling, and the tropics in England.
Here is a proposal for a Forecast Factory, a theatre for the
prediction of weather futures. But the shape of those weather
futures has become more and more askew. No more do we concern
ourselves just with the advancing rains and sunny days. Instead,
we must prepare for improbable ecologies, the fallout from
freak weather that spans from snow in September to malaria
in the temperate regions.
The Forecast Factory of the 21st Century is a much different
kind of works.
The English Quaker mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson proposed
a Forecast Factory that could track weather events worldwide.
These methods are still in place today, where the forecasts
we receive about weather futures immediate or distant, banal
or apocalyptic, are churned out through computational circuits.
We are updating this Forecast Factory to capture our impending
and aberrant weather futures.
In this updated Forecast Factory, we hope to provide a space
and process for meditating on weather histories and futures,
and for considering our role in creatively shaping those futures.
Related
projects are available at "Ice
Ages and 'Carboniferous States of Thought,'" published as part of Interdependence Day 2006,
at BBC / Open2Net. |
