Public Archive

A storm has passed through southern California overnight, and there are still impressive clouds in the sky. The air is brisk and full of water. I captured an image from NOAA-15 which turned out without glitches but unusually dark – as if the satellite was somehow sensing the atmosphere on the ground.

I assembled my antenna on a bench in a dim pool of lamplight after sunset in the local park. I had just come back from the march for Palestine and still had my placard with me. As I was already so cold and tired from being out at the march all day, and the park was even colder than the streets, I struggled to concentrate, almost dropping my antenna and laptop.

A break in the rain allowed me to duck outside to catch a NOAA-15 pass. The sun had set already, and very few people were out in the park and nearby streets. I searched for a bench near a streetlamp and assembled my ground station. I sat on the bench in the orbit of light provided by the streetlamp and extended the antenna, its metal dipoles glinting.

Ashen, cinereal, dusky, smoky, slated, drab, grey: this is how I would describe my experience of the weather today. It is in many ways unremarkable weather, as it is not very cold, nor very wet, nor stormy or very windy. It is simply grey- a matte feeling of the colour like it surrounds you everywhere, inside and outside, dampening even your thoughts.

Today is the first day I felt a slight note of spring in the air. When I woke up at 7am there was already plenty of light in the garden. On my cycle ride to Bloomsbury, my hands didn't feel the bite of cold on my handlebars. I was overdressed for the temperature, and had to unzip my coat halfway through the ride. Later in the evening I perched on our flat's back windowsill holding my radio antenna in full exposure to the night air.

I arrived in Shoreditch Park after meeting a friend for a coffee on the Strand. It was very cold but people were lounging on the grass and strolling around the park making every effort to enjoy a semi-sunny early evening. The 'radio weather' was very active. The amplitude of the signal jumped around wildly, and the waterfall display was checkered and criss-crossed by lines of radiation. I belatedly took a screenshot to record this, but only after I had unplugged my antenna so it is not as representative as I hoped. I wondered about very tall, black streetlights installed throughout the park that looked like they had cameras or other attachments on them. The signal of NOAA-15 would jump into audibility for one or two seconds and then get swallowed up by interference, even at the height of the pass.

Hackney Downs was golden in the late afternoon light, dogs frolicking and wrestling with each other across the grass. I had chosen a place for my ground station in the thicket of the action. A woman kept yelling for 'Eric!!!' though she didn't seem worried, it was more of a 'come on!' kind of yell. Eric turned out to be a small bulldog who paid zero attention to the calling of his name as he stole tennis balls from other dogs. The satellite image I collected was unusually dark- I wondered whether this could be because of 'night time' mode, or because I am live-decoding with SDR ++ for only the second time and some settings are off.

Myddelton Square Gardens is the name of a green, flower-filled square on top of a hill in Islington, and in which St Marks Church stands. According to the St Marks website, it is 'a country church in an urban setting'. As I held my V-dipole antenna to the sky, I tried to imagine where I was standing 'as country' without the church or surrounding three-story Victorian buildings. The Thames would probably be glistening in the distance, widening on its way to the sea. Or, given the density of the mist in the morning air, the hill would be shrouded in a small cloud, wrapped up without a view of the horizon.

The solar elevation was only 10.2 degrees as NOAA-15 passed overhead in the early evening today. The chestnut trees, now dense with foliage and pink-white flowers, cast long shadows on the grass. A man and a young woman (I presumed his daughter) walked up behind me, the man asking 'are you in touch with outer space today?' or some variation. I explained the image loading in on the screen, though it was too dark to make out land and sea borders, and I fear it might have looked very abstract to them. As I left the park to do an errand I noted a burst of blue underneath a sycamore tree and identified the plant as 'green alkanet'. Reading later, I learned that the five petalled, deep blue flowers of green alkanet are edible and can be added to salads and drinks. The roots were traditionally used for red dye. And the leaves, though mildly toxic, have various medicinal properties, recommended for treatment of coughs, digestive issues and fevers. When crushed and combined with vinegar and rose water they are also an effective remedy for burns and ulcers. As I walked through the neighbourhood to the grocery store, I noticed how much green alkanet was springing out of cracks in brick, in shady corners and in other uncared-for places.

Today, the headlines say that the ICJ is delivering 'a new ruling on Israel's war in Gaza'. In doing so, reporters state, the ICJ could order a halt to Israel's offensive. This is coming months after the ICJ ruled that Israel was plausibly committing genocide back in January, and many thousands of deaths later. Meanwhile, Israeli forces intensify attacks in Jabalia and Rafah. Meanwhile, the Guardian warns that we are about to experience the busiest bank holiday in years with more than half the nation's cars on the road this upcoming weekend. Meanwhile, this last week's heavy rains have caused playgrounds in East London to flood with sewage, according to my geography colleague who lives on a boat and works as a river guardian. Meanwhile, students in my department are taking an exam in a third year cultural geography course on commodities. The university campus is green, leafy and quiet; there are no visible acts of protest, no encampment, no sit-in or lie-in. Yet, from a union meeting earlier in the week, I know the university has passed new policy making it more difficult for students to engage in protest in the form of encampments, though people objected to this new policy being called 'draconian'. In a poem titled 'Fuck your lecture on craft, my people are dying' Noor Hindi writes "Colonizers write about flowers / I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks / seconds before becoming daisies". Later she writes, "Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound / When I die, I promise to haunt you forever".

This is day two of measuring tape Yagi antenna experiments. I missed all of the 'good' passes in the morning, so I tried for a NOAA-15 pass in the early evening that peaked in elevation at 17 degrees to the East. In contrast to my experience yesterday, where the Yagi effortlessly picked up the signal of NOAA-18 at a max elevation of 45 degrees to the East, this lower elevation pass turned out to be a struggle for the Yagi. I felt either I was not being precise enough with my aiming, or the pass just wasn't high enough for a signal to be well received by the measuring tape components. As I tracked the satellite, I became uncomfortably conscious that I was pointing this conspicuously large antenna almost horizontally over an open field where some young boys were playing football. I hoped I wouldn't be noticed by an anxious parent or onlooker.

Hackney Downs was golden and glowing this evening, as the city held on to its heat. My arms and shins throbbed slightly from a fast cycle ride from Bloomsbury. I thought about my meeting with J earlier today. We had sat in Russell Square on an uncomfortable metal table, discussing place-based weather knowledges, hierarchies in academia, performance journals and practitioners, and a possible open-weather automatic ground station in Western Australia. J mentioned many collaborators, institutions and places who I imagined with fictional appearances and atmospheres. As I recorded the satellite pass, reflecting on the possible station in Australia, two people came over to speak to me. They appreciated the measuring tape. Their names were Alex and Tamsin, and Alex kindly took the attached photo (thanks Alex!).

I awoke this morning not having slept because of the heat. T and I had left the bedroom and living room windows open but there was little breeze. In the middle of the night, the bedroom blinds started knocking against the window and I dreamed someone was trying to get in. Foxes screamed (or intensely rejoiced?) at 3am in the garden. In Waterloo station at 7:30am, an old, bearded, probably homeless man stood still with his eyes closed in the middle of the river of city commuters emerging from the tube and walking to the train platforms. I had to cross the current by hopping a few feet at a time through moving bodies in order to speak to him. He had an American accent but I shied away from asking about his origins. He didn't open his eyes when he spoke. By the time I bought him a coffee, he had got another one from someone else. We joked about the double coffee situation before I re-entered the commuter river. When I left he had opened his eyes, gazing straight ahead.

Last night I finished 'The Well of Loneliness' by Radclyffe Hall, first published (and then banned because of its lesbian content) in the UK in 1928. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, a woman from a rich family who, in the words of the time, demonstrates "sexual inversion" from an early age. Her life story moves from the rejection of her mother and expulsion from her home in the English Countryside, to driving an ambulance in World War II, to moving to Paris where she can live a little more openly with her partner Mary. To find places where they can be and dance in public, Stephen and Mary visit 'the bars' in Paris where queer people can go without fear of prosecution, yet these places are also full of despair, substance abuse and sadness. At the end of the book, and though it breaks her heart, Stephen pushes Mary away from her, as she sees that Mary could have the possibility of a 'normal' life with a man called Martin. In the last few lines of the book, Stephen, in anguish, pleads to God: "give us also the right to our existence!". I think of how much has changed in the 100 years since the publication of The Well. I can live together with T, I can live an openly queer life, and I can freely access and read this book. Yet the 'pull' of 'normal' has not lost its strength. Society's 'straightening devices' work in new and different ways today, but they still work. Living obliquely or 'slantwise' requires unusual and surprising effort at times. And in an even odder development, queer identities and politics are now being used to 'pinkwash' the actions of corporations or governments committing acts of violence. In many ways, and in Ahmed's terms, society today might be oriented 'to' different things on the surface, but in many ways it is still oriented 'around' the same 'straightening' logic.

'So humid' proclaims T as we walk to Hackney Central to catch the overground to Stratford on a rare trip to the Westfield Mall. The air is misty with a light rain, though it is just as warm as it has been under bright sun for the last week or so. On the overground, two Moms are taking a large group of young boys paintballing. We arrive at the Mall hoping to be early enough to evade most crowds, but we find we are not the only people waiting for the Adidas store to open at noon. As soon as the metal gates have been pulled back, throngs of people enter, and it is almost impossible to locate and calmly try on shoes. We persevere in JD, Footlocker and Office before both me and T begin to feel physically unwell from the press of the crowds, the 'hall of mirrors' that is every sports apparel store, the stress of finding our way around, and the ultra loud grime tracks that are booming from every corner (though some lyrics have clearly been redacted for children's ears). We flee after no more than 45 minutes and head home, shoeless.

I wake up having had a nightmare, but it is really a memory of a real event that was playing out in my dreams. In the memory, I am seeing one of my PhD students get publicly attacked by a senior professor (who is also someone I respect and in some ways depend on). I run through all the ways I could have acted differently in that moment. I visualise myself standing up in front of the room and hitting back. It plays and plays, until I manage to have breakfast. By lunchtime, though, I am lost in the flow of an article I'm trying to finish before holiday. As a visual contribution to the article, after lunch I experiment with making a satellite image (one that features a current of 'Saharan Dust' moving northward over the Mediterranean) into a 'thaumatrope': an analog, double sided, spinning device that creates an optical 'illusion' of blurred borders, animated shadows, and miscible surfaces. It feels good playing with a satellite image not on a digital screen (as I overwhelmingly do in open-weather) and rather in tactile, DIY form, using a tool that is reminiscent of children's games. For me, the thaumatrope creates a kind of optical 'irritation' of moving forms, nebulous shapes and shadows, and disappearing or fading-out land and sea edges. It also seems to 'agitate' the cartographic orientation devices that we use when we see the coastline of North Africa and the 'boot' of Italy. Writing of images of the monsoon, Harshavardhan Bhat writes, "Satellite images empowered by spectroradiometer science and international coalitions begin to not just inform the science of the state but the imaginary that the monsoon unifies the entity called South Asia as part of a planetary system... This is a gift to political theory as the monsoon then becomes this technology through which the planetary infrastructure of surveillance and governance slowly unfold, silencing the complex work of the air of the monsoon" (2022: 240). Does the thaumatrope help to destabilise the 'unified entity' of the Scirocco or Jugo wind that brings 'Saharan Dust' to Europe? Does seeing a satellite image flicker and blur between channels demonstrate something about the 'slippages' of materials and elements in satellite imagery, inviting us to see beyond the 'optical ontology of pixels'? In contrast to a regional 'event', can we recognise something about the 'complex work of the air'?

Today has been about rhythms. I organised and choreographed so many rhythms for myself and others, but the most intense was chairing a meeting with Soph and two Croatian scientists with whom I have been in email contact for months, and whose work I have studied extensively in order to include in a recent article on 'wind's animacies' and dust over the Mediterranean and Adriatic Sea. After so many protracted email exchanges and engaging slowly and carefully with their scientific work these last months, meeting them online was an experience of personality-encounter, joy, Croatian-language exchanges and rapid firing of questions (though I didn't manage to ask all the questions on my list). Later, during a research group seminar on ‘research rhythms’, we read aloud and discussed fragments of writing that suggested different rhythms, whether poetic, scholarly, scalar, material, or musical. The notion of ‘rhythming’ in research and a general tuning to the ‘science of the word’ is examined in an essay called "Rhythm, or On Sylvia Wynter's Science of the Word" by Katherine McKittrick, Frances H. O'Shaughnessy and Kendall Witaszek (2018). Starting from the work of poet and philosopher Aime Césaire, the authors write: “Césaire’s observation—that a creative science reckons with how poetic knowledge “is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge”—calls on the harmonious structures of collaborative thought in order to reconceptualize what it means to be human”. In other words, a 'creative science' suggests that there are ways to speak and enunciate research (including science) that are more truly collaborative and so rhythmic. I was immediately reminded of the interdisciplinary collaboration of the Croatian scientists and their willingness to be in dialogue with me and Soph on the call. McKittrick et al (2018) continue: “Like Césaire, Wynter does not turn away from scientific knowledge and privilege poetic knowledge, but rather shows that science of the word is an articulation of science and poetics together. This provides a “fulfilling knowledge,” one that understands the human in its most actualized form through the “climate of emotion and imagination.”” I love the idea of ‘science of the word’, that through a sensitivity to the craft of writing and ‘making’ words we are enacting a science that can perhaps see through the ‘silences’ of normative Science, which as the authors outline, has been responsible for articulating a version of nature that makes it possible to imagine and enact culture as separate to nature. We can ‘think science and poetics together’ in ‘fulfilling’, actualised and emotional ways. This is where I hope the collaboration and conversation with the scientists is going, though I know it is unfair to presume or predict outcomes. In the mean time, I want to return to their articles with an attention for 'science of the word' and 'narrative devices'.

The sun was very bright and the air so warm today, I ended up in a t-shirt while capturing the satellite pass. The park was lively as a soccer team started warming up and a group of walking womxn did laps on the sand trail. I was on a video call during the whole satellite pass, and this made me reflect on the ways the signal from my phone was relaying through a nearby cell tower and onward to the other side of the planet, while the NOAA satellite above me sent radio waves to the ground – I wondered, did the signals touch?

There is a soft light today, like the air is filled with small reflecting particles, whether water droplets or dust.

The humidity is unusually high today- around 88% The local park was very vibrant and active, with a young soccer team and a group of people throwing frisbees. On my way back home I noticed several policemen checking parked cars along Green Valley Circle. One group had what looked like a kit with a brush- I wondered if this was for fingerprints. Had the humidity of the air affected which fingerprints could be lifted off car doors, handles and windows?

It is a sunny and bright morning. As many people are working today after a few days holiday break, the air is filled with sounds of vacuum cleaners, washer/dryers, leaf blowers and home DIY equipment.

The air is so clean today- the rain has washed and blown away the particles that caused the air pollution spike at the end of last week.

I was on a palm tree-lined neighbourhood street in Culver City, around the corner from the Diorama-Museum of Bhagavad-gita, where I had booked a tour for the morning of January 1st. I balanced my laptop on the hood of my brother's car and held the antenna to the clear blue sky. The weather was bucolic, as if even the light had slowed down.

I experienced the weather of a private children's playground on a bright morning in January in LA. I could hear small children's voices echoing out of the Montessori School nearby, and the creaking of the playground equipment as swings and ladders moved.

From the 'point on the bluffs' in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, I could see as far as Palos Verdes and Catalina Island. It was a bright, warm day, and many people were out walking. The satellite 'set' over the Pacific Ocean- I felt I could hear it for much longer than I normally can from a place in the city, as there was only air between me and the horizon.

I made a poor choice not to bring a hat and gloves when I went out for the pass today, as Hackney Downs was sunny but extremely cold and windy. Even the dogs running in the park had sweaters and multicoloured outfits on. A man stopped and asked what I was doing, and a woman and a dog happily took some photos of me.

I tried to stay away from the weather today as my asthma had kept me up the previous night and I was worried about too much time in the cold. I leaned out my second story window to catch the segment of the satellite pass that managed to creep in between the Victorian buildings on my street.

I stayed almost entirely inside during this satellite pass, in sweatpants, slippers and an oversized jumper I had found in a vintage store in Buenos Aires. Even before I stuck my arm outside the kitchen window to catch the last half of the satellite pass, the antenna was picking up NOAA-18 inside the flat. This made me wonder about the porousness of our flat to the 'weather' of radio. Nicola took a look at my satellite image, he pointed out a cluster of white pixels where Mt Etna should be: the volcano is snow covered!

Half of Clapton Pond was frozen on the surface, the other half (receiving the sun over the tops of buildings) was not. Pigeons stayed out of the shade, milling about the edge of the pond and periodically bursting into the sky. In the decoded satellite image, I noticed that the mainland UK appears sandwiched between two bodies of east-moving cloud, receiving its own intermittent winter sun.

The weather today is gorgeous – bright blue skies and golden sunlight. All morning the DJs on NTS radio have been remarking on the beautiful (if cold) weather conditions. To soak up the weather as much as I could, I found a spot in the middle of the widest field in Hackney Downs and set up my ground station. I was exposed in other ways too- many people stared and pointed at me from a distance, but none came near.

I had finally made it home after a fourteen hour day at work at the university and on many commuting trains. It's been so cold in the UK with a current of Arctic air reaching down across northern Europe this week, but it has also been very clear and bright- I could see the stars as I reached my antenna off the kitchen windowsill.

The weather was bright and gusty, and bitingly cold. Hackney Downs was wide open and clear, so clear it made me wonder what it was before there was London. There were so many dogs being walked in Hackney Downs – I saw one person holding eight dogs – and a short-haired Australian Shepherd ran up to my laptop during the satellite pass. I stopped to pet her, and I wondered if her energy was having an influence on the satellite image.

I was in between two meetings on Microsoft Teams – one finishing and another one starting at 11:30. NOAA-18 was due to start its orbit over London at 11:31. I wondered – was there time for the weather? I tried to 'create time' by writing a 'I'm five minutes late' message to the person I was due to meet, and took my laptop to the bedroom to the nearest possible window to receive the satellite pass. As I was counting the minutes of the pass I was also counting how late I would be. I wished I could stay in the 'weather' of the bedroom and sunny back garden, and avoid the 'weather' of the Teams meeting room!

It was a gray blustery morning in Hackney Downs. A man with a dog stopped nearby and asked 'what's that mate?' to which I replied 'a radio antenna, I'm trying to catch the signal of a weather satellite'. He gave a thumbs up and said 'so it's a weather thing? a weather thing?' I nodded, and he walked off without further questions. I had apparently given a satisfactory answer. Yet I wondered what kind of 'weather thing' he was convinced I was operating.

Storm Isha has been sweeping across the UK this weekend, with amber weather warnings issued by the Met Office in many parts of Wales, Scotland and Western England. Though the conditions weren't that bad in London, I stayed in the back garden of our flat to keep sheltered from wind. A curious cat named Dylan came padding quietly up behind me to check out what I was doing.

Wind has changed the surface of the park and neighbourhood overnight, leaving large piles of torn leaves, knocking down branches, ripping coverings off parked motorcycles and bending 'for rent' signs on their axes. Whistles and howls echo through the streets and across the downs, joined by the sirens of ambulances and fire trucks. On local radio this morning there was mention of wifi and phone service cuts. This is London in the aftermath of Storm Isha, which has swept across the southeast overnight. Its long arm is dramatically visible in the satellite image I captured today – curving over France, Germany and the continent, and spiralling toward Sweden and Norway.

In comparison to the windy and wet weather of Storms Isha and Jocelyn over the last few days, today feels calm, even balmy. I walked to 'Founder's Field', the highest point on the university campus, to set up my spare V-Dipole and test a new dongle (RTL-SDR V4). The atmosphere of the university is also calm, as if the machines of departments, university managers and administrators are hibernating.

Abney Park Cemetery was muddy, wet, and full of dog walkers and strollers on this Saturday Morning. The density of the winter trees and the humidity of the air created a mist that felt appropriate to the vine-covered tomb-stones, monuments and crosses. I thought of the way early radio enthusiasts heard 'something in the static' that spoke of other spaces and times of the past and future. I pointed my antenna at the moist ground, wondering if the static would pick up frequencies underneath.

Today is an unusually warm Sunday in London in January. Although the weather has been overcast, the clouds feel veil-like and thin, and the Sun either burns them up or pushes them away by midday. As I was due to make a Sunday lunch for some friends, I spent most of the pass alternating between looking up recipes on my phone and checking the satellite signal. By the end of the pass I had both a long WAV file and a list of ingredients.

The weather of my body today is turbulent and choppy. Though I am usually able to remain calm on the surface, today is proving difficult. I am surprised when my bodily, emotional weather bursts out into the conversations I have with students and colleagues throughout the morning. I have begun to edit apology notes (probably unnecessary) to be sent later over text and email.

Low, gloomy clouds hung over London as we gathered in the middle of a green circular lawn outside of the LESOCO building in which Goldsmiths design students study for their masters degrees and work in their studios. Deptford creek gurgled just a few metres away, though it was closed for access by a tall metal fence. A highway overpass arced to our east and a six lane intersection around the corner made a constant soundscape of motorbikes and car engines. In this context we huddled around my turnstile radio antenna and attempted to orientate our bodies in relation to the satellite orbiting overhead and the series of urban infrastructures around us. A constant interference pattern caused audible distortion to the satellite signal and produced regular and oblique lines in the image, like counter-currents of wind or a graphical anti-pattern.

The weather of Hackney Downs park close to 9pm at night on a Wednesday was surprisingly calm. A whispy wind blew blades of grasses but didn't manage to move dry leaves on the ground. I caught the wrong satellite – I had intended to capture an image from NOAA-19, and tuned to NOAA-18 instead – and unexpectedly started recording a 30 degree eastward pass. This first felt inconvenient because a line of Victorian houses blocked my 'line of sight' to the east. But the signal came through anyway, and this accident meant that I captured a dramatic cyclone swirling over eastern Europe and Russia. Seeing the image startled me- a dramatic disconnect from my experience of mild weather in the park.

I met the Centre for Research Architecture students on the top of College Green at Goldsmiths University on a brilliantly sunny morning of the 1st of February. I introduced the DIY satellite ground station we would use to capture an image from NOAA-18, and immediately there were about a dozen questions. Melodie held the antenna first, tracking the satellite from the southern horizon to a maximum elevation of 43 degrees. Excited chatter was constant throughout, and laughter rang out as Melodie and later Penelope tried different poses and antenna orientations. The atmosphere was joyful and lively, but as the pass came to a close, the group was happy to return inside to warm up and look at the image in darker / calmer conditions.

Today I attempted to receive a satellite image from a pass that I assumed would be 'out of the sensible range' of my ground station. The maximum elevation of the pass was 13 degrees to the West, and I hadn't previously tried to receive anything under 30 degrees. Expecting to get nothing, I found a spot in the middle of Hackney Downs and held my antenna as high as possible to catch whatever radio waves could bend around the curve of the Earth as the satellite barely crested the horizon. Surprisingly, the signal was already visible at 13:28 and I had a reasonably strong signal by 13:30. As I watched the image load line by line, I realised I was seeing cloud patterns over Greenland and the north Atlantic, so far to the west that no coastlines of Europe were visible. Meanwhile in Hackney Downs a group of dogs played around me and the gray clouds hung low. There was something incredibly strange about seeing the North Atlantic so many kilometres to the west, while Saturday morning life kept unfolding in London.

A cold wind slowed me down on my cycle ride out to Hackney Marshes. Once in the marshes, I weaved between Sunday strollers, kids on bikes, canal boaters and athletes to find a corner of the marshes to set up my ground station. At first the NOAA-18 signal was drowned out by the characteristic signal of the Meteor satellite fleet, which caused a 'mound' of energy extending around 80hz to either side of the NOAA-18 signal. I started recording during this noisy occlusion, thinking NOAA-18 was about to pierce through (helped by Automatic Gain Control) but it took a couple more minutes for the signal to make it through the surrounding energy and noise. The wind continued to bluster as the pass progressed. A kind looking man with long gray curly hair and headphones stopped nearby and offered to take a photo of me. We spoke briefly about radio and satellites before he continued on his windy walk.

There is high wind today, it feels like gusts are slicing across the surface of the city, though it is hard to tell from what precise direction. The clouds are patchy and partial, like a fast-moving lattice, and sun pierces through in very quick beams that meet earth's surface and disappear again. I imagine that from the position of the clouds, it might be like a high-speed game of shadow puppets. What shapes they must be casting!

Rain pattered on the windowsills all morning. Water pooled and ran down the glass, and mist seemed to hover in between the three story houses on either side of our one-way street, like a wet cloud trapped in a crevice of our neighbourhood. I contemplated staying inside with my antenna held out the window, but ended up braving the rain with a big broken umbrella and a long insulated raincoat. Once outside, I propped the umbrella over a bench and set up my laptop and dongle under its shelter, with the antenna and cables curling out. At one point during the pass, the wind moved the umbrella and its flimsy, broken side sent pools of water splashing onto the keyboard of the computer- which I hurriedly brushed off with the sleeve of my coat, hoping no damage would be done. A man in full high-vis weather gear with a wheelbarow that looked like a recycling collection stopped next to the bench and asked what it was I was doing out here.

After a weekend of rain and mist, this Sunday morning is glorious, with bright sun coming through very soft clouds. The local Baptist church is in full swing and fragments of choir music and raucous laughter echo into the park from the church's open door. A small group of teenagers gather on the street corner in between the church and the park, angling their faces to the sun. As I recorded the satellite pass I was visited by a small grey curly-haired dog with a red collar who then sped over the wet grass in circles around me. I think about 'dog satellites' and speculate on what they might transmit.

I counted the seconds in the pass I captured this morning. Though the pass was of good elevation, and the weather is beautifully sunny and uncharacteristically warm, I truncated my recording and practically ran home with my antenna still assembled and my cables and laptop dangling. I was worried I would miss saying goodbye to my partner as she finished packing up and left for the airport.

As I hurried out the door and toward the park, I realised that an invisible drizzle had become a light rain. I grabbed one of the broken umbrellas by the front porch and went to the park anyway. Crouching under the makeshift shelter on a park bench, I assembled my ground station and tuned to the frequency of NOAA-18. I knew the pass would be very low in elevation – only 19 degrees to the East – but I was hopeful. After a few minutes of weak signal as the satellite struggled to crest the horizon, a clear image began to appear- showing what I thought were Nordic glaciers and reflective lake surfaces. Only a minute or two later, the unmistakeable 'mound' of Meteor M N2-3 appeared surrounding and engulfing NOAA-18. Though the NOAA signal was strong, it was simply drowned out by the much wider and more powerful digital signal of the Meteor satellite, like someone trying to whisper in a crowded bar. I stopped the recording early, reasonably drenched by the rain, and returned with the glinting shapes of Nordic lakes in my mind.

All night the wind howled around our flat. It caused unusual squeeks and whistles in different rooms. As a worked alone at my desk in the living room, the smaller, more random sounds made me imagine other people in the house, so much so that I went into the bedroom and studio to check! The wind had calmed by the time I went outside to catch the satellite pass, but I kept thinking of the wind-people.

This is the first day that feels a little like spring in London. The air has that shimmer that happens when it is misty but also bright. The green of the grass of Hackney Downs is vivid, an invitation to lie down (which I did) though I quickly learned it was also very soggy underneath. The satellite image I captured has a small cyclone curling over the North Sea, its long tail curving and sweeping all the way to the coast of Morocco.

My socks and shoes were already damp from weathering my morning commute to campus, and they got even wetter as I traipsed around the university grounds trying to find a good place for the satellite pass. The field to the back of Queens Building (where the Geography department is based) was virtually spongy with water. I decided to try to set up on a picnic table in the middle of two science laboratories. In full view of biological sciences researchers fiddling with pipets and samples through a bungalo window, I set up my ground station and hand-held the V-dipole. I was lucky that the first eight minutes were rain-free, but toward the end I had to lean my body over the laptop to protect it from drowning.

This was a social day in Hackney Downs! I was approached by two men and their dogs, and speaking to them took up most of my attention during the pass. The first was an older, very large man named Bill and his dog nutmeg, a medium sized, curly haired deep brown dog, maybe a kind of terrier. The second was a younger man with a very big and wide laborador. Bill told me stories of his father who had used radio during WWII to listen to the Germans, and later erected aerials at racecourses across the UK (for reasons I didn't entirely understand). He also told me about a lecture he had attended by someone called Chris Lintott that was about microwaves and radio astronomy. The second man whose name I didn't catch had set up an antenna on the roof of his second floor flat to listen to ADSB. He mentioned he had gotten a dipole and tried capturing a satellite image but was unsuccessful. He also asked if I was into amateur radio and when I said yes, he said 'you and about five other people in the world, right?'

My allergies have been horrible today- so bad that none of my emergency allergy medications and measures are working. While capturing the satellite pass, my eyes watered so much that I couldn't read the frequencies clearly; once back inside the symptoms didn't let up. When this happens I find myself desperately searching for the cause, but the thing about allergies is that sometimes there isn't one that is clearly defined. I am speculating about dust, springtime pollen, a low immune system, or lack of sleep- but none of these feel like the obvious source.

I am writing this weather note on a laptop that has been stepped on by a dog. I can almost see the outline of a paw on the lower right hand side of my laptop keyboard! While I was out in the field this afternoon, a man came up to me and asked what I was doing. He said he was following groups on Facebook doing similar things, but had never tried himself. He seemed genuinely interested in learning about open-weather and as we spoke his dog circled us several times, getting in the midst of the ground station and possibly changing the frequency I was tuned to...

A golden light has suffused the whole morning. The grass of the downs feels warmer, like the earth has heated up underneath. Near where I had set up my ground station, purple crocuses were pushing up through the weeds.

A light rain is forecast to fall all day today. It is coating the street, parked cars, trees, bricks and asphalt in a layer of water that is perpetually replenished from the sky. In weather like this, I wonder how the bugs and creatures of the soil are doing. As water logs the pores between grass roots and humus, do the smaller creatures begin to swim? do they breathe underwater?

This Monday in London in early March is grey and dark. I had the living room lamp on for most of the morning while I was on zoom calls. I was several minutes late for the low-elevation NOAA-18 satellite pass at lunchtime but I'm still glad I went out to the park, as I met a young mom pushing a stroller, who stopped by to ask what I was doing. I showed her the clouds slowly forming over the South Atlantic, and we spoke briefly about the weather 'above and below'.

The darkness of yesterday has bloomed into spring rain today. Sitting by the open kitchen window, I could hear the pigeons cooing on the roof, perhaps making use of the partial cover of the chimney wall. Many people walked by on Downs Road, though their umbrellas and quick paces meant that they kept their eyes on the sidewalk, oblivious to a strange metal object being held out of a third floor window.

I wanted to field the ground today, so I laid onto the grass of Hackney Downs while capturing the satellite image. It was wet, yes, and musty too, and it smelled a little like unhealthy compost and dogs, but it was nice to feel my whole body flat against the surface of the ground. The air was cool and mild and lots of people were out in the park, some staring at me as they passed a safe distance away.

An animated wind is bending tree branches, ripping petals off magnolia trees and making waves in the deep green grass that has sprung up in parks, squares and pavement-free soil around Hackney. En route to a pharmacy, I stopped in a small park in between the Greville and Rogate estates. A tower block, wrapped in blue fabric, was being constructed (or refurbished) at the far side of the park, sending drilling and hammering sounds into the wind.

The sun came brightly through our windows this morning. Hackney Downs was brimming with activity, including the usual small persons' soccer practice on the open field. I set up a good distance away from the soccer, but still two balls came my way, kicked high into the air by players whose fluorescent jerseys came down over their knees.

A gentle rain fell for the first half of the morning but conveniently began to let up before I headed outside to the park. The grass felt warm somehow, even though it was slick and waterlogged. As I stood with my antenna in the usual field, reflecting on the horizon, a jogger passed close by and in the space of twenty seconds we had a brief exchange. As he ran off he remarked 'the things you can do in the local park!'

On my bike ride to central London this morning, I noticed a cherry tree in full pink bloom in the courtyard of a church, and several magnolias in either late bloom or already dropping their oversized white petals. Yesterday was the spring equinox, but it feels like the singularity of spring happened some time ago. In Russell Square there were cordoned-off gatherings of bright yellow daffodils (though I wondered why it was necessary to ring these with black spokes and wire).

A weather system tremulous and noisy between walls

I realised as I left the flat today that I was wearing all-blue: old blue denim jeans from Uniqlo, a faded blue denim jacket with a warm lining that was my Mom's and has always smelled faintly of cigarettes, a striped navy blue jumper from my partner, royal blue socks, and a blue backpack and antenna bag. In Springfield Park in North Clapton I set up my ground station in a pool of daisies. A young couple asked me if I would take photos of them with their new baby. After I did so I asked for the favour in return, ending up with about twenty very skewed photos of me crouching over my ground station. When I explained what I was doing, the man who took the photos remembered seeing a string of Starlink satellites, which for him was 'weird' and 'frightening'. We had a brief chat about satellite resistance before they continued on their stroll.

The grass in Hackney Downs has been freshly mowed either last night or this morning, and the smell is all-pervasive and enveloping, and feels even more potent given the relatively low wind. I could hear snippets of conversations across the downs (a dog walker asking another dog walker: 'poodle?!' 'no, labradoodle!'). A man walked nearby and when I smiled, he asked in an eastern european accent 'what is it'? When I replied, he asked 'are you a meteorologist'? I was surprised by my hestitation in answering, though I eventually confirmed 'no'.

The rather grandly named 'Aire de Chateauvillain' is a gas station, electric car charger port and a food court with a Paul and a bistro. After waking at 6am and driving the best part of the day, my partner and I were absolutely starving, but we had trouble finding anything to eat. After being shown to a table between two other traveling couples, we were turned away from the bistro when they said they were 'out' of both the squash soup I wanted, the cheese plate we were going to share, and the goat cheese in the salad my partner ordered. As many other people were eating there, I had a sneaking suspicion that the bistro wasn't really 'out' of all of these separate dishes (how can a french bistro be out of chevre!? or cheese in general?!) but that we were turned away for other reasons. We made the best of it, and after I captured a rather noisy satellite image from NOAA-18, we went on our way.

Continuing our road trip, we descended from Courmayeur through the Vallee d'Aosta and around mid-morning were surrounded by a thick, matte grey haze just north of Novara, en route to Milan. As a satellite pass was imminent we decided to stop at an 'area di servizio' and take a short break. The AdS turned out to be crowded with trucks (one with a banner reading HOPTRANS) and cars, so the only place to set up the ground station was in a tiny children's playground called PlayLand, ringed with a fence. As the image loaded it showed a promiment veil of dust crossing the Mediterranean and completely covering Italy. Later as we were driving further east, we noticed that rain drops made small red marks on the windscreen.

I have been thinking all morning about the wind, so I was particularly attuned to the creaks and murmurs of the wind around our flat and street this morning. The wind in my thoughts, though, was different to the one chasing clouds across the sky of London in big gusts. Instead, I was tracing my family's memories of the 'Jugo', a wind that originates in the South over Africa, and blows over North Africa and the Mediterranean. Once it reaches the Balkans, the Jugo has picked up many particles and water droplets along the way. In my family's lore, shared across many in the Balkans and former 'Jugo-slavic' peoples, the Jugo brings certain feelings and emotions to the foreground. Yet unlike the Bora, a brisk, cold wind from the Northeast, very little has been written about the Jugo's cultural value, its meanings, and how it maps onto ideas of 'the south' in ways that need attention and critique.

Across Europe the air is unusually warm and skies are cloudy and hazy today, but the atmosphere in London is bucolic, with picnickers spread out over the grass of Hackney Downs. I spotted an incredibly beautiful bird in the garden, I suspect a kind of Jay with very striking blue array of feathers on its wings. In my satellite image, Storm Kathleen swirls in a dramatic line over the Atlantic, and I wonder how it can be so un-stormy in London. According to one online news article, Ellie Glaisyer, a Met Office meteorologist, says: “The storm [Kathleen] is the reason we are seeing the warmer temperatures, because the location of the storm – situated out towards the west – is bringing a southerly wind across the UK.”

Sun has been shining through the shutters of our south-facing flat's windows all morning, making ladder-like spotlights on the wood floor. The park was full of dogs and people: a body builder lifting what looked from afar like a giant, square piece of concrete, as if pulled up out of a London sidewalk; a young couple submerged and entangled in the grass; an office-attire wearing woman who spoke loudly to herself and a smartphone. The air smelled faintly of lemons and coffee.

As a bulb of fennel sizzled in olive oil on the stove, I leaned outside the second floor window of our flat, angling my turnstile antenna at around seventy degrees to the West. It didn't feel that long ago that doing so would have made me shiver with cold, but today I reached out the window withoat a coat or gloves. The air helped to soothe a splitting headache I developed from staring too hard at my computer screen this morning. The pain also made my perceptions fuzzy – a slight 'shimmer' in my peripheral vision.

The sky feels heavy and low to the ground, and the atmosphere suspended, a bit surreal. There is a strange calm. We feel sleepy and low in energy. It is kind of warm and humid but it won't rain – this is where 'suspension' comes from, there won't be a release. In the satellite image, we notice the sharp intersecting lines of ships' tracks across the North Atlantic caused by aerosols released from the ships' exhaust. This morning, when we looked at iPhone weather app, the app said we are 'seven degrees above the historical average' for this time of year.

The satellite image I captured today has so many striking details. There are clouds formed by orographic lift off the coast of Scotland – they look like short stripes or patterns, what are called 'gravity waves' in fluids. What I thought were ship's tracks yesterday, today look like contrails from airplanes criss-crossing France, the UK and the North Atlantic. The Alps are strikingly visible in the full sun and against the too-hot land of central Europe.

The Stoke Newington Farmers Market was at peak activity in the courtyard of Saint Paul's Church while I set up my ground station on the edge of the garden labyrinth. I could smell the Turkish gözleme being cooked on the large round stone, and an herb that I imagined was wild garlic. A man dressed in black with a thick-wheeled, heavy duty electric bike scowled at me from the distance. Another man sat down on a bench near the wall behind me and when I looked around and smiled he exclaimed 'technology!'. That one word hung in the air as I held my antenna to the horizon.

Somewhat hidden amongst some young trees and tall grass, and dazed by the bright sun, I heard a joyful 'hello!'. Bill and Nutmeg were walking over. We spoke for a few minutes while the satellite pass began. Bill had looked at the open-weather website, watched our talk at Sonic Acts, and then shared the project with his colleagues (Bill is a train driver). This was amazing to hear- I had never imagined that people I met in the park would take enough interest to follow the project online (I am learning fast about the social life of the Downs). Bill said he liked to think about how, while trains are moving over the ground in our daily lives, satellites are circling and sending signals overhead. The point of his story was to tell me that he had 'stood up for me'. Some of his colleagues are skeptical about feminism.

The wind roared in Hackney Downs today. I tried to figure out what the 'roar' consisted of – was it the cumulative effect of all the tree branches and leaves moving against each other? the city-wide friction of wind around buildings, streets and train lines? the scaled-up whoosh of the air across the grass? dog walkers threw sticks into the wind. They sailed high up and were pushed back to where they were released, the dogs doing circles, looking frenzied

The image I collected was crafted in between sudden downpours of hail! The first time the hail started, I crouched over my laptop and used my body as a quasi-umbrella, and it passed in about a minute. A break of three to four minutes gave me time to recover. In this gap, a young person jogged over from under a nearby tree to me to ask what I was doing. I started to explain by saying 'there is a weather satellite...' but as soon as I said 'weather satellite' he interrrupted me saying, 'oh yeah, I know it, I seen it, I seen it...' and he jogged back to his friends, repeating to them 'it's a weather satellite, I seen it'. Then the second downpour of hail arrived. This time I worried it was here to stay, so I quickly shut things down and got back inside, chunks of ice still in my hair!

The horse chestnuts are beginning to bloom, and their leaf foliage is now so dense that they cast deep, dark shadows on the grass of the downs. There is a big difference between standing in the sun on exposed grass and standing under a horse chestnut, in its cool shadow. A small, large-eared welsh corgi bounded over to me during the satellite pass, telling me I shouldn't be there. In the long grass the dog had to leap through the green, challenging for short legs.

Positioned in the middle of the freshly cut East field of Hackney Downs in full sun I felt like a planet with its own orbiting moon(s) and gravitational fields. Dogs – like asteroids or meteors – approached and veered away in long and fast trajectories. I studied my position and made sure to look in all directions. On my way back from the downs I passed a young, 4 foot high horse chestnut tree that I hadn't properly observed before. The tree is ringed by a small cage on which there are handwritten notes to 'Dad' and 'grandpa'.

I forgot to bring an umbrella on my way to the park today, and yet again had to use my body as a shield for my laptop when light rain started. I have been testing the water damage boundaries of my computer during satellite passes recently. As I was packing up two young men and a large curly haired dog approached and we chatted for a few minutes about how often and frequently the NOAA satellites orbit. I showed them the satellite image on my droplet-speckled screen and one said 'I am so glad I asked!'

Kites flew high in the park today, though the variable wind meant that they often crashed and needed re-launching. The grass has erupted in daisies recently, making white speckles across the ground. Yesterday I went to a local action for Palestine: a rally and march that began at Gillet Square and stopped traffic on Kingsland Road before turning down Dalston Lane and ending at the Hackney Picturehouse (the Rio Cinema and Hackney Picturehouse were chosen as start / end points as they have cancelled/ boycotted events in solidarity with Palestinian artists and people). I find local marches like this extremely moving, in some ways more so than the national protests attended by hundreds of thousands in central London (there is one of these next weekend). Yesterday the march ended with a speech by one of the organisers of Palestine Solidarity UK, about how we need to keep showing up in public spaces, especially as London remains an active site of public protest unlike other cities in Europe. Despite the strength of these local actions, I sense a growing despair and raggedness in the protests, a myriad of ways to conceal feelings of despair.

On my walk to the park today I noticed the blooming branches of an eastern redbud tree, and I learned about how eastern redbuds are in fact closely related to legumes. This made sense as the flowers resembled those of sweet peas. The pass was cold and grey, though a man kept riding back and forth on the nearby path singing to himself, which made everything a little more joyful.

Today is one of those typical days in London where, from the inside, it looks like it is raining outside, but once you are outside you can tell that it's just a wet mist that has made all the surfaces shine with water. The park was relatively empty except for a few people dressed in coats and dogs dressed in little jackets and gillets. The clouds overhead seemed to match the weather systems swirling over the Atlantic, making dense white and off-white shapes.

I arrived on the grass with ideas for an evolving piece of writing spinning in my head. I made a mental post-it board and logged some ideas for the last few sentences of the collaborative essay I was working on. Crows were pacing around on the Downs, maybe making mental notes of their own. One passed close by my ground station and I thought I picked up on a sense of curiosity in my actions. A very large husky, looking strikingly similar to a wolf, charged several of the crows and was only kept from my ground station by a very long tether.

My ground station was visited by a number of dogs. At one point there was a big husky, a german shepherd, two small terriers and a middle sized dog circling and moving through the radio wires and narrowly overstepping my laptop- a dog seance! They arrived with three people who had come over to see what I was doing. Two people I recognised before (they immediately identified the 'weather satellite') plus a woman I hadn't met. While the dogs carreened about, and the others continued walking, the two of us spoke briefly about environmental science and education. One of the smaller terriers came to sit next to us, as if to get some shelter from the german shepherd, and the three of us watched the image load together as the satellite orbited south over France and Spain.

I arrived at the beach of the River Thames shortly after low tide. The curve of stony beach accessible from Trig Lane Stairs was criss crossed by mudlarkers who hardly noticed me as they bent to the ground and turned over pebbles and pieces of seashell. Arriving at the beach straight from a symposium at the Tate, my head was filled with dialogue about sirens, alarms and states of emergence / emergency. The radio spectrum had its own sirens. Around every two minutes or so, the relatively calm 'ocean' of spectrum in which I tuned my ground station was interrupted by what I can only describe as 'blasts' of energy that drowned out all other signals. The blasts would disappear, allowing a minute or two of calm, before returning. I tried to discern whether they coincided with the Uber Boats traveling up and down the Thames. A mudlarker passerby – who turned out to be an art history professor at a university in London – speculated on this wtih me for a few minutes. As I took a final few photos of my ground station the tide was already beginning to come back in.

The air of Hackney Downs was wet – sparkling with water – and though it wasn't exactly raining, droplets fell on my body, antenna and laptop. After so many days attempting to record satellite passes during hail, drizzle and rain in Hackney Downs this last month, I wondered if a tree could serve as a tempoorary ground station holder and shelter. A Montpellier Maple tree was close by, bright red, winged seeds were clustered along its branches. My antenna was too heavy for its branches but I observed how the branches and leaves were porous to the radio signal of NOAA-18 to the east.

A pair of orange grass cutter machines, like small tractors, circled around Hackney Downs today, carving edges around trees and casting grass perfume into the air. It was sunny and bucolic. Over the weekend I attended a rally in support of Diane Abbott that took place at the centrepoint of the park, in similarly beautiful weather. As a new resident of Hackney (since last October) I didn't know much about Diane Abbott's story, how she was the first black woman elected to the UK parliament, but also how she faced so much overt discrimination and agression while an MP. Several speakers at the rally mentioned Diane's record of standing up in Parliament advocating for the rights of working people and communities, but also how she was frequently shut down or attacked. I also didn't know that in 2023, due to an article she wrote, Diane's 'whip' was removed, effectively suspending her from the Labour Party. As a foreigner in the UK, the idea of a 'whip' is a strange one, and I read that it comes from language around hunting, where a 'whip' keeps hounds from running off the path. Despite all of this, the atmosphere at Diane's rally was exuberant and energetic, with rousing chants of 'We stand with Diane!!!' echoing to all corners of the park. As I meditated on this and received a satellite image, Martin came riding over again. After I shared that I had been comically trying to take photos of myself by propping my phone up in a nearby bank of grass and running to my ground station to pose, he helpfully took some photos of me (thank you Martin!). The satellite image was made by live decoding with SDR++ and an RTL-SDR V3 dongle (sadly I tried the V4 again and there was no signal at all). The troubleshooting continues...