Contributions – open-weather

2025-06-15 21:45:36

Alison Scott

Arbroath , Scotland

Scotland

NOAA-19

We’ve come over to the park in search of more open skies, but realise with the satellite travelling to the east the trees - a tangle of Scots pine, brambles and elder - will be in the way. Still. The sun is getting lower but you can tell it’s close to the solstice: a long bright evening. I’ve roped Aaron in to join me, and we set up on a bench near the top of the hill, next to the water tower. Kids on bikes and wandering teens don’t give us much notice. Around where we settle the broom is already full of leafy-green pods, cow parsley is high and my hayfever is off the charts. The pond below is gleaming with the setting sun, and to the west there’s an open view along the coast when the beachfront opens up and the Tay joins the North Sea. I haven’t seen Aaron in a few days so I catch him up a bit about the End of Life Nowcast, and we reflect on the last one, during COP26 in Glasgow, laptop precariously shielded from lashing rain by a wonky brolly. It can be very useful to have a helper, whatever the weather is doing. I think of NOAA18 still circling, silently. Pointing the antenna at the horizon, I realise I’m bracing to hear nothing, but out of static comes the familiar tones of NOAA19, if a bit faint (due to the trees). Again the idea: ‘the static's like the sound of thinking.’* I should really get another USB extender, or tape it together, this one is a bit loose fitting and when it detaches slightly from the dongle the recording stops and I have to restart it. So, my recording for this pass is in two parts. Both about 5mins. If I splice the audio files together and upload the file, what happens? Thinking with the glitch, being happy with the lack of and resisting the idea of a ‘good’ or clear image is always part of this process. Need to remember this. A counter to the closed, fabricated smoothness and place-less certainty of the pin sharp google image. The space that these DIY processes open with their fuzziness, the image’s materiality written in the grain. *Tom McCarthy, ‘C’ (Vintage, 2010) pg63

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