Making Art from Weather Data

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

On my way out of town, I flew from San Jose’s new terminal and got to check out eCloud. It’s a new, interactive art piece that uses weather data from all over the world to create a changing display made of glass squares suspended from the ceiling. The electronic sign shows a city and its weather which triggers the array of glass squares, which will change from clear to opaque depending on the cloud cover in each city. Sacramento on this warm July morning was clear so most of the squares were clear, but Lisbon had some overcast so some of the squares were opaque. The weather information comes from NOAA and this piece represents an increasing interest in data-driven artwork. I shot a short movie on my Flip, here’s a link… eCloud display at San Jose Airport

2 Responses to “Making Art from Weather Data”

  1. Gordon McDonough says:

    LOL! When I was an art student at the U of Miami in the early 1970′s I used to dumpster dive behind the computer center to recover printouts from NOAA’s plotters of satellite weather maps. I had a wall covered with these sparse but elegant pen-and-ink drawings.

  2. Debbie says:

    I think this is an awesome idea – it looks cool and ‘new age’ but for someone like me, a non-techy sort of person, it would be confusing. I’m a grandma – although I have websites and spend hours each day online, it does take me awhile to master each new concept. I’m afraid this would take me so long that the weather would change before I would figure out what I was looking at!

Leave a Reply