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COP26 Nowcast Nowcast: 6 September 2020

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A patchy record of DIY satellite imagery and weather notes since 2020. The open-weather public archive is open to everyone willing and able to contribute.

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Words for Climate

An evolving set of words chosen by contributors to reflect their experiences of the climate crisis.

chilling effect,

mossy,

sudden change,

rising,

cyclical,

loss,

fire,

climate reality,

huge,

bright,

underground,

hum of seeds,

Darragh,

elemental,

worms,

mulch,

conspiratorial,

passion,

Nebel,

brewing,

clamour,

forgery,

recycling,

repurposing,

concrete,

civil war,

common ground,

dialogue,

questions,

gloom,

weather,

numb,

grey,

Short-comings,

Uncertainty,

Fog,

wind,

Storm Bert,

Coming storms,

Flat earth,

Bomb cyclone,

indoor sunshine,

displaced,

Joke,

Chaos,

Irony,

temperature rising,

decay,

dirt,

soil,

what you know,

Resist,

Tribe,

Collective action,

Silver linings,

Searching,

harvesting,

Policy,

Climate denial,

Democracy,

Fossil record,

Geologic time,

Anthropocene,

betting on the future,

gambling,

risky business,

hope,

reality,

flooding,

Cognitive dissonance,

Crisis,

slowing current,

Atlantic cooling,

Amoc,

frustration,

anticipation,

troubling,

Troubled,

everything,

Anticipatory,

Serene,

remote,

ten foot surge,

1000 year storm,

warming Gulf,

Milton,

re-member-ing,

harvest,

mushrooms,

Palestine,

given names,

the wind singing,

a lifetime,

body,

overheat,

people,

noise,

moist,

fair,

local,

light,

hotter,

learn,

radiate,

weather balloon,

upside down,

floods,

Grief,

Relational,

Breath,

Lurking,

Medium Temperature,

a story,

greening,

darkening,

inter-relations,

immeasurable,

story,

xenomorphic,

lichenous,

trans-scalar,

saturated,

fractal,

multi-scalar,

circulated,

reflected,

emitted,

warning,

sensuous,

furry,

rainy,

cloudy,

wet,

memory,

calor,

coal,

sweat,

heat,

placid,

grounded,

calm,

clear,

breezy,

chilly,

windy,

differential,

hazy,

red-orange,

green,

gelatinous,

slimy,

deforested,

ominous,

sticky,

ponderous,

summer,

rushing,

sweaty,

silver,

veiled,

vruće,

sunčano,

suho,

energetic,

wavelike,

spectral,

ancient,

railway tracks,

rupture,

warm,

unstable,

cold,

sandy,

crowded,

scorching,

relief,

tubulent,

noisy,

humid,

bodily,

red,

dusty,

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Ground Station Type

Automatic Ground Stations are local, semi-permanent stations that record and upload satellite transmissions automatically once per day. Manual ground stations are DIY and often mobile; operators manually record and upload satellite transmissions.

Automatic

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Satellite

The archive contains Automatic Picture Transmissions (APT) by US weather satellites NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and NOAA-19.

NOAA-15

NOAA-18

NOAA-19

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Collective earth-sensing events led by open-weather, co-produced by a network of contributors around the world.

6 Sep 2020

COP26

Weather Between Us

Year of Weather

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Weather Note

2024-12-21 11:29:00

Automatic Ground Station 11 Arbroath

Arbroath, Scotland

Yellow weather warning just starting here. Bright but very very windy from 2 floors up, leaves swirling everywhere, bins falling about

2024-12-13 17:53:00

Automatic Ground Station Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-07 20:23:00

Automatic Ground Station 10 London

I woke at around 6am to winds buffeting the flat and a car alarm going off on the street. Can winds cause car alarms? I wondered as I drifted back to a light sleep. This morning, the needle of the barometer teetered far below 1000 hPa and pointed at the diagram of a storm. Indeed Storm Darragh was already swirling across the U.K., a storm so violent that the Met Office issued a red wind warning, alerting people of the threat to life – only the 19th since 2011.

2024-12-07 05:01:00

Automatic Ground Station Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-06 11:19:00

Automatic Ground Station 10 London

The needle on the barometer crept up from its place around 1,009 hPa yesterday afternoon to 1019 today around noon. True to the barometer, the sky opened up into a clear, crisp blue. I was reminded of Gaston Bachelard's writing on the aerial imagination, and his writing of air as 'thin matter' that is especially sensible to poets.

2024-12-05 17:52:00

Automatic Ground Station Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-04 07:50:00

Automatic Ground Station 10 London

2024-12-04 06:13:00

Automatic Ground Station Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-03 21:48:00

Automatic Ground Station 10 London

London's air is a crisp, cold air today, but the movement of the city keeps me warm. The pressure on my barometer reads over 120 hPa, and the arrow of change points to 'clear' weather. I spend the day in rooms full of students in colleagues, on multiple tube and overground trains, and on busy high streets. Walking from my university campus in Bloomsbury to Tottenham Court Road at sunset, I can almost feel the warm glow of each body as it passes by me in the crowd.

2024-12-03 18:51:00

Automatic Ground Station Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-02 15:32:00

Automatic Ground Station Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-12-01 10:07:00

Sasha Engelmann

Hackney Downs, London, United Kingdom

In a recent article on 'Clouding knowledge in the Anthropocene', Kate Lewis Hood proposes a "cumulative reading - where cumulative shares an etymological root with cumulus, a type of cloud (OED, 'cumulate') - that shifts from clear skies to fog, between atmospheric transparency and opacity" (2018: 83). Exploring poetry including The Weather by Lisa Robertson and Drift by Caroline Bergvall, Lewis Hood suggests that "such experimental practices enable a shift from asking whether to read or interpret in a certain way to engaging with the weather system of a text: its unpredictable changes and complex patterns" (2018: 185). If today's weather system in London was a text, it might read like this passage from Robertson's The Weather: Our skies are inventions, durations, discoveries, quotas, forgeries, fine and grand. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Heavenly and bright. The day pours out space, a light red roominess, bright and fresh. Bright and oft. Bright and fresh. Sparkling and wet. Clamour and tint. (Robertson, 2001: 10)

2024-11-26 06:15:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-11-14 10:19:00

Automatic Ground Station 13 London

London , United Kingdom

2024-11-12 11:24:00

Automatic Ground Station 13 London

London , United Kingdom

I duck-taped my turnstile antenna to the kitchen window while I went outside to capture the same satellite pass with my tape measure Yagi-Uda. Collecting two images - one from an AGS and one from a mobile station - will help us identify if there are any unusual patterns in the images collected by the AGS.

2024-10-30 10:05:00

Automatic Ground Station 11 London

London, United Kingdom

Today is humid, over 80%, and this creates blurry lines and fuzzy borders. The sky hangs low over London. In the evening, news of the flash flooding in Spain comes online, and T and I watch with horror as Channel 4 news shows images of people being airlifted from flooded homes, holding tightly to their pets, and cars having been pushed across streets and cities - piled up, water logged.

2024-10-29 10:17:00

Automatic Ground Station 11 London

London, United Kingdom

As I leave for a workshop with a PhD student in Bloomsbury, early this morning, I set up my turnstile on the kitchen windowsill. Making sure its 'reflector' spokes are inside the window, and the cable is taped to the window ledge, I leave the flat. Upon returning many hours later - after cycling over 1.5 hours in total across London, through streets heavy with mist, smog and traffic - the antenna is still there, poised to receive. I wondered, as no one was in the flat when it recorded, whether the plants sensed what was happening. I wondered if the simultaneous recording of Automatic Ground Station 11 on the kitchen table, connected via a thick coiled cable to the turnstile antenna on the window, together with two other Automatic Ground Stations in T's studio (not connected to antennas) changed the conditions of the flat in some way. I enjoyed thinking of the three stations lighting up on cue, all attempting to track and receive radio waves from NOAA-19.

2024-10-27 11:25:00

Automatic Ground Station 11 London

London, United Kingdom

2024-10-26 10:33:00

Soph Dyer The Seaweed Institute

Helston, Cornwall, UK

A crisp and clear. Blue skies after yesterday's rain showers. The Automatic Ground Station hosted by The Seaweed Institute at the visual arts organisation CAST in Helston is online! The station's weatherised v-dipole antenna will remain inside, and so reception limited, while we search for an accessible rooftop location. The Seaweed Institute is run by Kerry Holbrook and Ruth Klückers on the south coast of Cornwall. The project connects people, seaweed and the intertidal space. Kerry and Ruth have spent the last five years working as seaweed harvesters on the Lizard Peninsula for the Cornish Seaweed Company. Ray Dyer, Soph's sister and and co-director of Goonown Growers, was also present. The day began with a visit to the community food growing project, Loveland, in nearby Penryn. Thank you, Finn and Ray, for the tour of the new polytunnel and winter crops. More updates in the coming weeks!

2024-10-13 17:06:00

Prototype Test Device Los Angeles

Los Angeles, United States

2024-10-12 11:14:00

Automatic Ground Station London

Today on BBC, Keir Starmer says he is remaining focused on the achievements of his new government, refusing to be distracted by 'side winds'. The phrase gives me pause, as it suggests that recent scandals around campaign donations or staff adjustments are akin to a tangential or minor wind. I think about the associations between wind and chaos, and the way the prime minister must be intent on distinguishing the focus of his government from any hint of entropy or agitation. Yet, if there are 'side winds', what is in the centre or the middle? Is it a storm, like a hurricane? Is it another wind, but one that is constant and measured? At the salon this morning, I was telling my hairdresser about my Mom's experience of Hurricane Milton, and the number of people who texted me about my Mom's safety, having seen Milton's imagery on the news, as well as the rumours and lies that have emerged in its wake, about the government creating and directing the hurricane, or refusing emergency relief. A woman who has just been styled for an upcoming hairdressers convention overhears me, and tells me she is from Idaho. "it's so fascinating what you were saying about everyone focusing on Milton" she says, "because where I'm from, in Idaho, we had the largest and most severe fire in US history earlier this year, and it did not make any headlines. No one was talking about it". I confessed I had not heard about the Idaho fires either, despite being an American, perhaps more attuned to US media than most people in the UK. She had to leave for her taxi before we could finish this conversation - which left me thinking again about 'side winds'.

2024-10-11 11:27:00

Automatic Ground Station London

Tropical Storm Leslie is brewing in the mid-Atlantic. By Monday, it may begin to reach the west coast of Spain, much like where the beautiful curving cyclone visible in today's image is swirling. For now, central Europe is dotted with a few clouds but is otherwise relatively clear. This image from an automatic ground station in my flat was captured by a turnstile antenna leaning on the windowsill, its metal dipoles shining in the noon sunlight.

2024-10-11 08:57:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Remoteness is a position. The prototype Automatic Ground Station has freed-up my time to write more contemplative, spelling error free Weather Notes, but this has come at a cost. I no longer need to go outside in all weathers at inconvenient times of the day (when I should be in a meeting, eating dinner or just doing something unrelated to satellites and weather). For several weeks, I have not had to checked satellite orbits, hold an antenna or manually decode sound and process files. As a result, I look at today's satellite image with a sense of detachment. I treat the image more like a 'data product' than an hard-won 'weather observation'. This abstraction makes the tropical storm systems just beyond the image's frame feel remote and the weather outside my window feel comfortingly local. What's more, I have allowed a 'safe' distance to open up between me and other geopolitical heavy weather. When I manually captured longer satellite images, I often looked for Black Sea or coastlines of North Africa, the Gaza Strip, Israel and Lebanon to orientate myself. Put differently, I have put the 'remote' back into remote sensing and it has become easier for me to deny shared atmospheres and storm systems, interdependencies and breath.

2024-10-10 06:37:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

The weather today sounds like names: Milton, Kirk, and Leslie. The weather sounds too like rain, even though here it is not raining. This is because the tree outside my studio window makes a rustling, swishing, and swooshing sound in the wind. Laden with dried beanpods it has become a musical instrument. I see passersby turn to find the origin of its percussive song. While working, I tune out of the news feeds of Hurricane Milton crossing Florida and tune into the tree.

2024-10-09 18:30:00

Automatic Ground Station London

After having watched Hurricane Milton on various media throughout the day, and thinking about my family in Northern Florida, going to sleep tonight feels like a very difficult thing to do. As I try to distract myself with a book, I can still see the slowly spinning 'arms' of the hurricane, like an after-image.

2024-10-08 21:56:00

Automatic Ground Station London

I wake up to news of Hurricane Milton, one of the most rapidly intensifying storms ever measured in the Gulf of New Mexico. The category 5 storm is on a path to make landfall in Western Florida by Wednesday evening in EST. My Mom just moved to Florida two months ago - on time for hurricane season. She lives in Gainesville, just north of the projected path of Milton. On various late night phone calls over the last two weeks, she has showed me mountains of debris on her street, still there from Hurricane Helene, which also passed close, but not directly over Gainesville. Later in the day, I am in a team supervision with one of my PhD students, and my co-supervisor, a geomorphologist and quaternary scientist, shares that he was planning on searching NOAA's National Centre's for Environmental Information the other day (researching data for a third year undergraduate course practical) but the NCEI headquarters are in Asheville (Buncombe County) in North Carolina, one of the cities hardest hit by Hurricane Helene in the last few days of September, and they have had a continuous power outage since. My colleague reports that most of the region's electricity substations were flood damaged, as are all the bridges. Initial damage estimates are coming out in the order of $30-45 bn. Out of >100,000 houses in Buncombe County only around 900 have flood insurance. A former NOAA scientist has estimated 40 trillion gallons of water fell. And now Milton has arrived. Normally, the NCEI would offer 'real time' products for tracking weather like Milton, and it is a crucial hub in packaging various forms of satellite, sensor and other data for a wide group of people including farmers, businessmen, insurance companies and weather services around the US. But as of today, none of NCEI's real-time tracking and forecasting features are available - this is a big hole in networks of weather data sharing and communicating. As I hold my turnstile antenna out the window for a satellite pass close to 11pm this evening, I read the prognosis of a Florida based meteorologist, speaking of Milton: "This is nothing short of astronomical... This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth's atmosphere over this ocean water can produce."

2024-10-08 19:24:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

"When the sand settles," said my sister on the phone earlier. I think that she meant to say "when the dust settles" but misspoke and created a one line poem.

2024-10-07 19:36:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

On my way to work, I see a posy of flowers and candles arranged around a group of 'stumbling stones' (Stolpersteine) for Jewish Holocaust victims. The care and thought contained in the small act of memorialising such unfathomable violence moves me. Yet, I also feel disquiet at the possible mnemonic "fusing" of the October 7 attacks with the Holocaust. In a Guardian article, 'How Israel has made trauma a weapon of war', Naomi Klein asks what are the dangers (and motivations) of making such parallels? Klein's arguments have resonances beyond Gaza to other contexts where work is being done to remember the violence and victims of war. Sasha, I am thinking of your 'pilot' research into your family's Balkan ancestry, knowledge of wind and other more-than-meteorological weathers. I am thinking too about how half a decade ago I tried and mostly failed to write about the flawed efforts of Western NGOs to record and so mark the deaths and injuries of civilians in the wake of US-led aerial bombing campaign against the so-called 'Islamic State' in Iraq and Syria. The questions that recur, for me, are about how the memorialisation of "traumatic histories can be done in ways that encourage collective healing and a sense of solidarity across divides" (Klein 2024). And, how when this is not the case, throughout history the transmission of trauma has been used to stir revenge and justify punitive campaigns of violence. Conversely, too, how when public or collective acts of remembrance are forbidden, mourning becomes an act of resistance. Remembering or "zochrot" in Hebrew, writes Klein, "in its truest sense is about putting the shattered and severed pieces of the self together (re-member-ing) in the hopes of becoming whole" (Klein 2024).

2024-10-07 07:57:00

Automatic Ground Station London

In Enemy of the Sun, Samih al-Qasim writes: I may – if you wish – lose my livelihood / I may sell my shirt and bed. / I may work as a stone cutter, / A street sweeper, a porter. / I may clean your stores / Or rummage your garbage for food. / I may lie down hungry, / O enemy of the sun, / But / I shall not compromise / And to the last pulse in my veins / I shall resist. | You may take the last strip of my land, / Feed my youth to prison cells. / You may plunder my heritage. / You may burn my books , my poems / Or feed my flesh to the dogs. / You may spread a web of terror / On the roofs of my village, / O enemy of the sun, / But / I shall not compromise / And to the last pulse in my veins / I shall resist. Samih Al-Qasim, “Enemy of the sun,” in Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance , Edited by Naseer Aruri and Edmund Ghareeb (Washington, DC and Dar es Salaam: Drum and Spear Press, 1970).

2024-10-06 06:40:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

“How cold do you think it is outside?” I ask N as I hesitate between a light woollen or puffer jacket. “Now maybe it'll get cold. Until recently, with the sun it was okay,” he replies. I choose the black puffer jacket and we make a walk around the neighbourhood, appreciating the changing colours of dusk. We wander into a large Gemeindebau and weave through its ascending courtyards until, unexpectedly, exiting onto a familiar street. After three days of rain the sky is clear and air crisp. TD and GD left for Berlin this morning. Their spirits were not dampened by the wet weather. GD left an tunnel made of pillows, chairs and towels in our living room. Except for the walk, N and I spent the day in our pyjamas enjoying the afterglow of a weekend spent with friends.

2024-10-05 20:49:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Giant Riesenbovist mushrooms, colourful Kurbis (pumpkins), and sweet Sturm made from fermenting grape must are the seasonal highlights this weekend's market. Sturm (also spelled Storm) is made from grapes picked in Austria and is named after its swirling, cloudy appearance. As well as the autumn storms that typically signal its arrival. This year Storm Boris flooded the Danube valley before the grape harvest was complete. Sturm is so volatile that bottles of it are sold without lids, so as to allow the gases to escape, and its alcohol content can vary from one to around ten percent. A fellow shopper asks the stall holder in earnest if there will be more Sturm next weekend. He responds it is likely, but stops short of offering a guarantee. By next weekend will the Sturm already be wine?

2024-10-05 18:34:00

Automatic Ground Station 10

Today's night-time capture from Automatic Ground Station 10, currently in testing phase in London, looks like the 'ectoplasm' of 19th century clairvoyants, a current of veiled matter flowing over the continent.

2024-10-04 20:18:00

Automatic Ground Station 10

The satellite image collected by Automatic Ground Station 10 is framed with the noise and obstructions of a London street at night, a full story of building behind and four story buildings across the street. Yet in the window of signal there is a glimmer of movement, a curve and swirl of cloud that, in the infrared channel, speaks of something moving far away. I am still in awe of the fact that this is possible with an antenna held out of a window.

2024-10-04 08:44:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

The temperature is hovering around 11 centigrade. Not quite the "baltic" but still bone chilling. It's wet and soggy. Yesterday, I learned the German word for "drizzle" is "Nieselregen". Today, Nieselregen has turned into "it's chucking it down" or depending on your mindset, "lovely weather for ducks!" My favourite word for especially grey wet weather is the Scottish, "dreich". To my ears, it sounds perfectly bleak.

2024-10-03 20:28:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station London

2024-10-03 17:41:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

New automatic ground station test location. Today is cold! Or perhaps I am just feeling the cold as I type this because I have to keep a small window open to run the ground station cable indoors. Brrr.

2024-10-02 06:44:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

2024-10-01 10:09:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

2024-09-30 17:19:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

"Helene Has Killed More Than 90 People. Here Are Some Of Their Stories" read the New York Times headline. I tried to recall if I had heard of the serial killer. Woman serial killers make headlines as the embodiment of evil – women who choose to take life, rather than reproduce it. I realised that I knew Helene. She had been seen a week ago in the Gulf of Mexico, before making landfall over the Big Bend of Florida's Gulf Coast, churning out death and destruction in her wake. Helene was a hurricane. Her first name was Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine, given to her by United States meteorological service on 23 September 2024. A day later, as she grew in strength and her personhood took shape, they renamed her Helene. In writing about plants, Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer observes that “names are the way we humans build relationships, not only with each other but with the living world” (Kimmerer 2013). My home country, the UK, began naming storms in 2014, following the US which had started giving tropical storms female-only names in the 50s. It took decades of feminist fighting for the US meteorological service to assign storms names coded male too (Skilton 2018). Lately, I have been thinking about the power of naming and names to affect real-world relations. I read a British study that compared named and unnamed storms of similar strength, and found that there were fewer cars on the roads during the named storm. The study's authors reason that this is because of the media event that formed around the named storm, possibly saving lives (Charlton‐Perez 2019). In North American and European nomenclature, storms are named at their geographic origins. If a storm named by the US meteorological service crosses the Atlantic and reaches the UK, it will retain its American name. What if, I wonder, we were to reference a different origin? For example, social, historical or political? In ‘Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays)’, Rebecca Solnit argues that to name is to “diagnose” and so to transform our ability to speak about a subject, even articulate our relations to it (Solnit 2018). What if, rather than naming storms after each other, we traced their social origins? One outcome could be that unusually large storms, such as Helene, are named after the extractive industries that make their existence statistically so much more likely. If Hurricane Helene had been introduced to us as Hurricane ExxonMobile or Storm Shell how might our relations to such 'extreme weather' events be changed? To name storms after Big Oil feels as offensive as it is flattening. Yet current naming practices fall short too. It would be apt if, in media coverage, mega storms sounded less 'woman serial killer' and more 'corporate killer' or 'colonial menace'. Could such an expressive exercise help us grasp our role as "weathermakers" (Neimanis 2014), to diagnose the social-political origins of today's weather, and so articulate our relations, our knotty response-abilities to it?

2024-09-29 19:35:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

2024-09-21 19:34:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

I stretch the blue plastic gloves over my hands. Harvesting grapes reminds me of Marina Abramovic's performance "Counting the Rice" in which participants count and separate grains of rice for a minimum of six hours. At first, it's a novelty to be outside cutting, sorting, and plopping the grapes into the bucket at my feet. Then the repetition becomes annoying. I even feel a little anger. But I have committed to be here so cannot stop and by the morning break of coffee, Käsebrot and gherkins, I have found peace. My experience is more solitary than that of the other volunteers whose German language chatter I struggle to follow, espcially when it slips into Viennese dialect. The grapes are small weather globes (Wetterkugeln). We remove the brown, mushy ones smelling of vinegar that did not survive Storm Boris's record rains, dumped on the Wachau region only a week ago. We leave the purple-brown ones that smell sweet and have a fuzz of 'good mould' (Edelschimmel). Their sugars index a summer of sun and heat-stress – Europe's warmest summer since records began (Copernicus 2024). Lastly, we pick out the grapes with small black bruises left by hail early in the growing season. These are mostly on the South-facing vines that I am picking. They will not be sweet, the winemaker tells us.

2024-09-17 08:54:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

2024-09-16 09:06:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Berlin, Germany

2024-09-09 06:40:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Heavy rain and cold. In the Vienna woods, mist hangs dense and low between the trees. Back in the flat, on the phone to my mum, I noticed a red balloon suspended above the rooftops. It appears to be tethered by a long string, implausibly stretching the length of the block before disappearing behind a roof. The string is long and weighs down the balloon, which despite its size must have had significant buoyancy. It looks not much larger than a child’s party balloon, but perhaps this was an illusion of perspective. I wondered if it is a weather balloon come back to Earth, however there is no visible payload. Perhaps it is a child's ambitious experiment?

2024-09-08 09:58:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Tomorrow is Schulstartwoche (the week Austria's public schools reopen after the summer break). On Saturday, the man who I buy apples from at the market, tells me that he remembers the Schulstartwoche being cold and rainy. Today, it was so warm outside we closed the windows to keep the flat cool, only to give into the humidity and reopen them. Weather forecasts suggests that, inline with memories of Schulstartwoche, Monday will being heavy rains, causing the temperature to drop to a chilly 19C.

2024-09-07 10:11:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

V and I, adamant that it was the last day of summer, caught the train in the opposite direction from home to Hallstattsee. The lake was blissful. Its steep sides and deep waters have kept it cool, even after the hottest of summers. This we learned this from an older couple and their two dogs, who joined us on the narrow pebble beach. I took my first dip since the operation. The cold water held me, drawing me down. Despite my caution and an unfamiliar tugging in my abdomen, I dipped under again and again. The feeling was one of release. I extended my body, unfolding and stretching it in ways that I have not since the beginning of August. The lake’s water was cloudy and its stoney bottom, quickly dropped away. With my film camera, I photographed V floating in a starfish position, her peach colour swim suit beautifully offset by the dark greens of the lake and mountain side. In that moment, I think that we both felt a supreme confidence and peace in our bodies.

2024-09-06 19:19:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

It is one month since the operation and being engulfed by the 'closest weather' of my body. Last night I dreamt that I was standing in a brackish pool near the coast, bare foot with a fine mud between my toes. N and S are nearby. The coastline could be West Scotland. N asks if I’ve stood in the pool before. I know that I have, but for reasons I cannot explain, I lie and say that I haven't. Stripy leaches appear from the mud and attach their mouths to my feet. In horror, I freeze, unable to move for fear of stirring up more leaches. N reaches over and helps me jump out of the pool. I wake distressed and go to the next room where N is sleeping. I fall asleep again, only to dream that I am at a surreal hospital check-up.

2024-09-05 19:31:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Despite the daytime heat, the nights are cooler. Only the mosquitoes continue to be a pest. There must have been a mass hatching event as there are so many, espcially in the studio. I think that I am now able to tell part the larger black and white striped ‘common’ mosquito from the smaller brown ‘tiger’ mosquito. With some encouragement, the last of my five scabs 'fell' came off. I pulled at the plastic surgical threads still protruding my my belly button but they wouldn’t budge and later my tummy ached. Once all the wounds are seal, I can swim again. These days, I can mostly move without pain but I am still cautious about twisting or turning too suddenly. I wonder if the doctor will find adhesions when I have my check-up in two weeks. The thin red scars look small on the surface but feel bulbous beneath the skin. In the evening, S from the hospital, WhatsApp'ed me to say that her endometriosis had already returned. The news is disturbing. She already has a new cyst! So, soon? “No one could have known,” she writes.

2024-09-03 20:50:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Sunny, but not too hot. A manageable heat to get work done in.

2024-09-02 21:03:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

There are so many mosquitos in the studio! They bite you even when you are wearing buy spray.

2024-08-29 19:17:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-28 19:30:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-27 19:42:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-26 20:50:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-25 08:37:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-24 08:49:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-23 09:58:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-22 17:29:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-20 19:28:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-19 20:38:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-18 20:50:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-17 06:35:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-16 08:48:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-14 17:35:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-14 10:11:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-13 06:38:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-12 19:27:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-11 19:39:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-10 20:50:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Satellite not known.

2024-08-09 21:03:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

Today, I came home from the hospital. The weather was fair and I wore a tee white printed shirt and black slacks, loose at the waist. Satellite not known.

2024-08-06 19:00:00

Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien

Vienna, Austria

There was no satellite recording today because N was still troubleshooting the prototype ground station, so a bending of time, this recording is from tomorrow, the day of my operation. As I write this, I am waiting for the 'big day'. It’s raining, I can hear but not see the water cascade onto the hard facade the 1970s hospital building as the long curtains in my room are closed. Possibly for privacy or, I speculate, because the my roommate left for the operating theatre this morning when it was still dark. Either way the yellow glow of the artificial lights makes me groggy before anyone has even laid a finger on my body. A nurse searches for the word in English, “I will tie the bandage tight so as to stop a …. hema-toma." "Your vein opened too wide," she explains. "God", I say, "that sounds bad!" She reassures me, then sticks a cannula above my wrist where there seems too little flesh between skin and bone to cushion its intrusion. It stings. I watch my blood back flow into the two plastic tiny tubes. “I think that I’m going to throw up,” I say as a nurse announces lunch. I am given a cardboard bowl to throw up in and a tray with a clear soup, asparagus, rice, lettuce leaves, and a yogurt. I skip the yogurt and throwing up, and decide that I need sunlight. Opening the long curtains brings into view a drab but solid looking Altbau opposite. The rest of the day passes with time suspended between boredom, anxiety and grief, the sources of which I guess but chose not to give shape to with words. Satellite not known.

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