Weather Imagine-Better

Background

Through AUB Human, Alice Stevens has been collaborating with Activate Performing Arts for the past four years. This has involved a range of projects and roles, including chairing the public-facing panel discussion

Climate in Crisis – Can Art Inspire Action? at Poole Lighthouse to a co-produced student exhibition on the site of an iron age hillfort in Dorset. However, Stevens believes that it is their shared values that make the collaboration so rewarding and mutually beneficial.

In June 2022, aligning with the Green Space Dark Skies project, Activate and AUB staff collaborated on developing the Environmental Connection brief. The brief drew on Stevens’ practice-based PhD research that also aims to foster a deeper connection with nature.

Research

Stevens research aims to address the problem whereby existing narratives around the British weather can prevent people from building a deeper connection with nature. For example, the continuous portrayal of rainfall in the media as a negative event creates a disconnection with the essential role of water in all forms of life. These types of disconnection can in turn engender behaviours that can have a negative impact on the environment. Mădălina Diaconu asks: ‘Does Beautiful Weather have to be Fine?’, and calls for ‘a reflective aesthetic attitude on weather, as influenced by art, literature, and science, which discovers the poetics of bad weather and the wonder that underlies average weather conditions’ (Diaconu, 2015). A central aim of this research is to extend the principles of ecolinguistics into design practice. Through exploring new forms of visual communication, the work aims to provoke new conversations that could act as a catalyst for positive sustainable change.

Ecolinguist, Professor Arran Stibbe, explains: ‘Through awareness of the weather, students can gain new insights into the relationship between person, local place and world, and how this relationship will need to change if we are to build more sustainable societies’ (Stibbe, 2017). Stevens research aims to show how thinking and making that is informed by the theories of ecolinguistics can use non-rational faculties such as imagination to imagine a better, more regenerative future.

Prototype

The Weather Sensing Audio Wellies are the first in a series of experiences that aim to connect people with new narratives and perceptions around the British weather. The intention of the Weather Sensing Audio Wellies is to provide a joyful experience that provokes thoughts and conversations about the broader issues of the climate emergency through the weather.

Over the past few months, Stevens has been working with Mark Benson, creative technologist, to create a working prototype of the Weather Sensing Audio Wellies. The wellies contain an environmental barometric pressure sensor and are able to sense different weather conditions. They also contain a speaker and Raspberry Pi Pico, a microcontroller board that can control and receive input from a range of electronic devices, along with various pre-recorded spoken eco-poems. This means, that when the wellies sense a specific weather condition, such as rain, a specific poem can be triggered.

Stage Two

Following a meeting with Kate Wood and Dom Kippin from Activate in November 2022, Stevens was invited to present the Weather Sensing Audio Wellies as a series of community walks at the international outdoor arts festival, Inside Out Dorset. This will take place at Dorset Wildlife Trust site, Wild Woodbury in September 2023. The experience aims to challenge the perceptions of the general public to reflect on what is referred to as good and bad weather.

In additional, Stevens will be working with Zakiya McKenzie, environmental writer and storyteller, to generate new eco-poems for the project. These poems will draw inspiration from the principles of ecolinguistics and use positive language around the weather to help people build a connection with nature.

The next step is further testing and development of the prototype. This will provide forty working weather sensing audio wellies that will be presented as Welly Walks at the Inside Out Festival at Bere Regis on 2024th September 2023.

For more information: https://activateperformingarts. org.uk/whats-on/inside-out-dorset/

This project has been made possible with support from the AUB Innovation Studio.

References

Diaconu, M. (2015). Longing for the Clouds – Does Beautiful Weather Have To Be Fine.

Contemporary Aesthetics, 13. Available from: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/liberalarts_ contempaesthetics/vol13/iss1/16/ [Accessed 22 Feb 2023]

Stibbe, A. (2017). Living in the weather-world: reconnection as a path to sustainability [online]. University of Gloucestershire. Available from: http://mewewhole.com/wp-content/ uploads/2016/11/english-version-WEATHERWORLD.pdf [Accessed 22 Feb 2023]