2024-10-11 08:57:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
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
Austria
NOAA-15
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.
2024-10-08 19:24:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
"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
Austria
NOAA-19
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).
2024-10-06 06:40:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
“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
Austria
NOAA-18
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?
2024-10-04 08:44:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
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.
2024-09-29 19:35:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
2024-10-01 10:09:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-10-02 06:44:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
2024-10-03 17:41:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
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.
2024-09-30 17:19:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
"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?
2024-09-21 19:34:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
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.
2024-04-14 22:23:46
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
The wind has been squally, like my body. I woke tired. To reclaim my body, I swim one kilometre at the local pool. The full sensory experience of swimming focuses me on breath and rhythm, in ways other sport cannot. I feel my muscles and enjoy imagining the small exercised-induced testosterone boost. I feel back inside my body, home.
2024-06-25 12:36:45
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Vienna
Vienna
NOAA-18
I thought that I'd overheat but cloud came between me and the sun. It's hot, but not too hot, and the heat is dry. I feel more at peace in my body today. I know that I need to listen to it and respect its limits while it heals. The city building's are no longer cooler inside than out. I am trying to be productive, get work done, but really I want to be lying flat on my bed or dipping in the cool waters of the Danube. How are you Sasha?
2024-06-14 11:36:59
Soph Dyer, Nicola Locatelli
Stefy & C. Market Di Gallizia S. e Valent S. Snc, Moggio di Sotto, Italy
Italy
NOAA-18
I cannot focus on the meteorological weather as a delivery truck arrives to unload at the supermarket, which carefully crop out of shot. In the moment irritated the moment, but later accept my foolishness of my desire to document the mountains without people, cars and the heavy industry that lines the Fiume Fella river valley.
2024-06-12 20:04:12
Soph Dyer
Dordolla, Italy
Italy
NOAA-15
A musician, Pietro, joins us for the satellite pass. The alpine village of Dordolla is so small, we just needed to walk around for word to get to Pietro that we were at the only bar. There is a light drizzle. N makes a beat to the sound of the satellite, tapping the puddle with his foot. Pietro makes a sound recording. He is a drummer. The air is thick with moisture. The energy of yesterday's electrical storm has dissipated, but the clouds have not broken yet.
2024-06-14 21:53:37
Soph Dyer
Tiere Viere, Dordolla, Italy
Italy
NOAA-19
The sky is meeting the mountain. Fair weather, finally. Rain was forecast but did not come. The air smells good. It is a crisp, clear night.
2024-06-16 22:39:42
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
The tat tat tat of toy machine gun drifts up from the otherwise empty street. It is warm, comfortable. When we got home from the holiday the tomato plants were stressed from thirst and had curled their leaves from prevent water loss. After visiting such radically different climates – the dry heat of Istria and the wet cold of Firuli – and after overhearing my sister swap farming anecdotes of a too wet, too cold spring-summer with our host in the agriturismo, I contemplate how local climate is is and the importance of grounding theories of weather knowledge in specific sites.
2024-06-17 12:37:54
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I rush out between Zooms calls to receive this satellite image on the balcony. The weather is warm dry, my mood is light, even joyful. I prop the my phone up on a potted Yuca, so as to get the tomato plants in the frame.
2024-06-18 12:23:59
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It's heating up. I enjoy how the city radiates heat from all directions, loosening my muscles. I embrace the floppy feeling. Yet Vienna is not yet built for sustained summer heat. Its surfaces are mostly sealed, there is too little vegetation, and it does not cool-off enough at night. I am standing in the blazing midday with sun cream and sun glasses but no hat. I am still learning how to live in a country that is a little hotter, a little drier than the North of England where I grew up. A group of young school children pass, all wearing matching caps. I take note. Buy a cap. During the satellite pass I try turning on a feature of the software defined radio programme called Automatic Gain Control or AGC for short. Gain is a property of the antenna, which can be manipulated in the software … and this still confuses me. Usually, I use the programme's waterfall display to manually adjust the gain, however today, keen to improve my understanding of gain and the software, I experiment with turning the two AGC functions on and off, and then both on at the same time. The waterfall display turns from blue to yellow to red. To my ears, the signal to noise ratio sounds worse, however the resulting image looks surprisingly uniform. In my studio, M, shares with me a weather forecast from the ORF, Austria's national public broadcaster. She wants me to know that Saharan Dust is forecast for Friday.
2024-09-17 10:58:00
Soph Dyer
On a train and in my bed, Between Czechia and Austria
Between Czechia and Austria
NOAA-19
I wake groggy from the late arrival of my flood delayed train. Out of habit, I open my phone and load the news. Brown water fills the screen, punctured by branches, submerged buildings, and the fluorescent jackets of emergency workers. A climate scientist in Switzerland, Sonia Seneviratne, is quoted as saying that "most of the water vapour came from the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea, both of which have grown hotter as a result of human-induced climate breakdown". I share the article in our Signal group. Our intern, LJ, replies that this is a "vivid image". I agree, picturing the Mediterranean falling onto Vienna, in a Hollywood-like special effects inversion of sky and sea. A literal image of our world turning upside down.
2024-09-17 08:54:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
2024-09-09 06:40:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
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
Austria
NOAA-18
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
Austria
NOAA-18
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
Austria
NOAA-19
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
Austria
NOAA-19
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
Austria
NOAA-18
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
Austria
NOAA-19
There are so many mosquitos in the studio! They bite you even when you are wearing buy spray.
2024-07-25 22:53:01
Soph Dyer
Lacknergasse, Wien
Wien
NOAA-18
Cool temperature. Still night. There is a thin film of cloud. Earlier, inn the hospital, I read a draft of Wind’s Animacies by Sasha. The article sweeps me up, taking me far from the fluorescent lighting and airless weather of the waiting room. I turn over her question, "what does the wind remember?" I am moved by it, perhaps because I am grappling with how to reorganise or cohere a messy medical history of ill health with the new knowledge that comes with a diagnosis. I find myself caught between wanting to forget the lost days in bed with a pillow tucked under my abdomen, or the sleepless nights and listless days that followed. Could an earlier diagnosis have changed the course of my access to treatment? This is is both too painful and utterly pointless to think about. I want to reorganise my memories into a tidy narrative of endometriosis, cysts and fibroids, rather than the current cluster of unexplained, possibly unrelated symptoms that moved around my body to the extent that I stopped trusting myself as reliable narrator. I am thinking with Sasha's words: is pain is similar to wind? Neither are immaterial or material. Is pain not energetic, “slippery”, “leaky”? Thinking about wind’s memory is an analytic move away from asking “where does the wind come from?” (n.d. Engelmmann) A question that forces an artificial cut into time to arrive at a single origin point. I exercise changing the familiar questions “Where does the pain originate?” or “When did the pain begin?" to “What does my body remember?” This new question requires me to relearn to trust it my body and its complaints. To piece it back together. In a wholly different context, that of the 2016 US presidential election, American essayist and anarchist Rebecca Solnit writes “when the subject is grim, I think of the act of naming as diagnosis.” Diagnosis does not equal a cure, but it is an act of recognition that has the potential to reorganise and make sense of memories.
2024-07-02 21:32:41
Soph Dyer
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
NOAA-19
It's been raining. I wait for the weather to clear and capture the satellite's transmission in the dark next to Kovači Cemetery. The low stone wall I am sitting on is cold and damp. The cobbled road near me is empty but at its end, where it opens onto a broader street, people gather at the entrance to a mosque. Uneasy about the location, chosen without knowledge of the city because of it is the closest open space to where we are staying, I attempt blend with the night.
2024-07-09 10:12:00
Soph Dyer
Duboka, Vis, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-19
Woke surprised by hot the apartment already was. As I set up my antenna on the track leading into the village, an older man and woman came out of their house to offer me local produce. Sweating, declined in stilted English. Perhaps I sounded Spanish as the conversation turned into an exchange of "Mucho calor!"
2024-07-04 21:05:37
Soph Dyer
Miholjače, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
NOAA-19
Two fire flies flash. I watch the coal mine and power plant on the plateaux, my radio antenna balanced on a rock above the road. A hazy red sunset bleeds out into darkness. On a walk this afternoon, the owner of the guest house pointed to the where an underground river was being rerouted to accommodate industry. His tone seemed to express a mixture of depression and despair. He did not mention the coal power station, which is not visible from the house. Now I see it, I imagine it thirstily drinking the river.
2024-07-03 21:19:36
Soph Dyer
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
NOAA-19
I am stood in the backyard of our host's house. Deep greens and reds of a flowering vine frame the midnight blue sky. Today, N and I visited the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide, and then rode a cable car built for the 1984 Winter Olympics to a hilltop overlooking the city. In the evening, we walking along the Miljacka River to the book store 'Buybook Sarajevo' we stumbled on the opening of the BOOKSTAN literature festival. Before we realise that there is a festival, the crowd gathered out side felt familiar. Enjoying the atmosphere, we purchased two white wines and sat on a park bench. As N is at the bar buying a second round, I complement the small dog of an elegant older woman. She tells me that she is a translator of an English language book about the siege written by an author living in the United States. She is here to meet the author, she tells me, and will not stay for the festival as she is already looking forward to returning to her home in the countryside. When I later search for the festival programme online, I find its tagline: “A literary festival where there is neither East nor West, but just humans and their stories”. This evening my memories of working on war crimes investigations in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine, mingle with the stories of survivors from the museum displays. As we were entering the last room of the museum, I thought I could hear a video. There was no video, instead an older woman and man speaking in Bosnian. They looked distressed, I think the woman was crying. The couple were being interviewed by a small film crew. The walls of the yard block my view of the Sarajevo below, yet I know that the city I arrived in three days looks different.
2024-07-10 11:46:31
Soph Dyer
Duboka, Vis, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-19
Intense heat stops me thinking. I sweat into my teeshirt and instantly regret exposing myself to the unforgiving sun. "Tomorrow", I note to myself, "wait until nightfall".
2024-07-13 22:42:00
Soph Dyer
Duboka, Vis Island, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-18
2024-08-29 19:17:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-28 19:30:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-27 19:42:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-26 20:50:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-25 08:37:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-24 08:49:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-23 09:58:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-22 17:29:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-20 19:28:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-18 21:56:16
Soph Dyer
Lacknergasse, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
There was a big electrical storm this evening. Bolts of lightening flashed between clouds for hours. As I have spent most of my time indoors over the last two weeks, so to witness this weather event, even from the window, was exhilarating. My recovery from the surgery has been uneven and absolutely nonlinear. I have moments of pure joy, such as when I woke from a nap feeling completely rested, my mind loose but still. But by the afternoon, I missed physical exercise and social contact. I know that I need to ride out this turbulence. Or rather ride with it. NOTE: I received the satellite image after the storm had passed and the stars were out.
2024-07-18 21:38:15
Soph Dyer
Diepoldplatz, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
A soupy night. Warm and still. Older men on park benches smoke and watched as I point my antenna. My phone crashes multiple times. I focus on the long beans handing from the tree in front of me. The last kids of the day shouted in the park, two whizz around on scooters with LED lights in their wheels. I try to ignore the men’s gaze and relax into the warmth of the night.
2024-07-17 21:51:08
Soph Dyer
Lacknergasse, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Mottled cloud mellowed the sun and a breeze prevented the air from feeling too close. On the balcony it is dark, grasshoppers sing. The tomatoes are recovering from a lack of water while N and I were on holiday. The crop is about on third ripe. Despite the stress of returning to medical admin and heavy weather between me and N, it’s been a good first day back at work. Sasha and I spoke for more than three hours. The feeling of pressure on my chest is easing. I will make the most of the cool night and sleep early.
2024-07-15 22:12:09
Soph Dyer
Perković Railway Station, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-19
"I wonder if climate change can be measured in hot tracks?" you reply in response to my photo. N and I are waiting with perhaps a hundred other passengers at a small railway station outside Split. The reason, we are told by a cheery Austrian train guard, is that the railway tracks are too hot for the train to proceed. We must wait for them to cool. It is more of a novelty than an inconvenience to be stranded in the warm night with strangers. Assured by the guard that the train will not leave anytime soon, I made a dash to a local store to buy extra water and two ice creams. The small shop is filled with fellow passengers. The atmosphere is convivial if a little restless as we wait for the shop attendant to finish slicing ham for a local customer. I return feeling victorious, carrying the ice creams, the train has not left and will not leave another two hours.
2024-07-14 23:32:15
Soph Dyer
Duboka, Croatia, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-18
There are even more Mauve Singers in the bay, too many to swim without being vigilant. N and I collect white plastic rubbed smooth by the Mediterranean and bring it back up to the village in bags. Our host is distressed and moved to apologise by the sight of so much plastic. He is an older man possibly no longer unable to make the steep 25 minute hike down to the water. He mentions the heat and then "the Albanians". N is confused and thinks that Albanian tourists have been littering in the bay, as opposed to racialised ocean currents carrying the trash from the Albanian coastline. His misunderstanding lightens my mood.
2024-07-11 22:25:02
Soph Dyer
Duboka, Vis, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-18
I am getting better at staying cool headed in the heat. Blue skies, a few clouds. A gentle wind brought some relief. Today was hotter than yesterday. Our host said that he installed the air conditioning unit the day we arrived. He complained many times about the heat. It was a reassuring to know, as a Northener, that I was not the only on struggling. Yet it was disconcerting to know that the heat was new. It has not always been this way. N and I waited until the relative cool of the night to receive a satellite pass. We walked down to a track leading away from the village. Using a head torch, I checked for snakes. To my relief, I found a grass hopper laying eggs and a stray cat. Towards the end of the pass, curious to know what other animals might be near, I looked around for more eyeshine. My survey revealed many small green dots. I approached, expecting to find small animals, perhaps lizards warming themselves on the stone? Instead, behind each green dot was a Radiated Wolf Spider. N and I were being watched by tens of spiders. I dislike spiders so quickly packed-up and retreated to the house, eyeing the green dots lining the track.
2024-08-19 20:38:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-18 20:50:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-17 06:35:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-16 08:48:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-14 17:35:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-14 10:11:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-13 06:38:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-12 19:27:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-11 19:39:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-10 20:50:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Satellite not known.
2024-08-09 21:03:00
Prototype Automatic Ground Station Wien
Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
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
Austria
NOAA-19
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.
2024-06-10 12:25:53
Ray Dyer and Soph Dyer
Mošćenička Draga, Croatia
Croatia
NOAA-18
I am on holiday with my sister, Ray, and her partner Ben. When we check into our Airbnb the host, a women a little younger than our mother, apologies for our "bad luck" with the wet weather. We engage in pleasantries about how unpredictable the summer has been, and wet and warm the spring was. "We are not looking after Mother Earth", our host concludes. Her tone is serious. I think I detect fear, but cannot be sure. We say that "we do not mind", that "we will swim anyway", because "we are from the North".
2024-08-03 22:39:31
Soph Dyer
Lacknergasse, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Still, mild, mottled clouds. Clear air. By contrast, there is so much to write about the turbulent, changeable weather of last week. And, yet, I know that I cannot because some weathers are ineffable, and there have been so many, in too few days. Together, Sasha, we altered each. My hormones were so low (by chance) and I was grieving how my body will be changed by the operation next week. You tried to lower the waves of adrenaline and cortisol with empathy, touch and grounding words. It worked, to a point. We were what M Murphy, co-director of the Environmental Data Justice Lab at Tornoto University, calls "endocrine participating" (Murphy 2024). Yet the estrogen and progesterone in my body refused to join in, staying so low that my sleep was disturbed and recall foggy. You felt so steady and strong, but I know that you too were tired and running on empty. Our boundaries felt dangerously porous. Yet, in clear breach of feminist protocol, we worked. We worked on this project: carefully dismantling and debugging 3D-printed prototypes, testing digital interfaces, and making logistical plans for when and how to send hardware to far away locations. We also swam and drank too many Weißer Spritzers. You tried to order a doppelter Espresso but instead made-up the word "dooblé". We laughed, mixing caffeine with dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins. We laughed too when, during a beautifully intense dance performance, we saw ourselves in the two dancers' energetic, full-bodied exchange. On the way back from lunch, I quite literally fell over your feet, bloodied my knees, and sat wordlessly gulping for air on the pavement. The activities list I drew-up before your arrival is now just over half crossed-out. Hungry to share, you and I pushed each other, as always. Next time, I hope for fairer weather between us.
2024-07-26 19:58:20
Marlene Wagner and Soph Dyer
Seestadt, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Warm wind, residual heat. U-Bahn, aeroplanes, kids on the beach, gravel under our feet. Long shadows where the city meets the landscape.
2024-07-24 10:38:20
Soph Dyer
Danube Canal, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
The sun went in and out flooding the lush foliage in a dramatic yellow light. I had run out of time to reach the park, so carried my bike down a flight of steps to the bank of the Danube Canal. To my right two, trees that I did not recognise bore seeds and globe shaped fruit. The uncut grass next to the water's edge was flush with wild flowers. Up stream, almost under a road bridge, a woman wearing a hippy paisley print vest was collecting something from the bank, slowly filling two plastic shopping bags. I assembled the antenna unhurried with the knowledge that in my sunken position the satellite would take need to be almost overhead before I could receive it. It's transmission arrived earlier than I expected but my phone crashed, corrupting the file and forcing me to restart the recording. Once done, I sat on the bank, listening to the satellite's rhythmic presence and enjoying the cool winds and waters of the Danube.
2024-07-22 19:33:19
Soph Dyer
Park bench, Lackerngasse, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
What I thought was the beeping of a heart monitor was actually the beeps of a pedestrian crossing. I feel hollowed out. Heavy and exhausted, I sit on the street corner bench. I began the satellite pass stood next to the empty plot beside our house but moved because there was so much radio noise. It has become a mysterious fact that, since the block of flats that stood there was demolished last summer, the void has been filled with radio waves. I imagine live electrical cables buried under the compressed rubbled. Electric snakes hidden under shattered brick. This image has stopped me from venturing behind the flimsy construction site fence to pick wild flowers. A woman walking to beautifully glossy dogs stops to ask if I am listening for bats. For a moment, I wish that I was engaged in a short-range, in-situ sensing that could connect me more directly to the nature that surrounds me. Before the building was demolished there was a large bat population. No, I say, weather satellites. Man-made, metal birds, a thousand kilometres away. One of the three sisters in my building passes and asks what I am doing. I offer a less than satisfactory explanation as I have decided to rush to the nearby supermarket before it closes to buy a 'sports drink' in an attempt to replenish the electrolytes in my body.
2024-07-20 21:11:38
Soph Dyer
Postsportverein, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
A welcome overcast day with light rain. Inexplicably, I heard air traffic control on the same frequency as the satellite NOAA-19. I was sitting on the concrete bleachers of the local sports ground, beneath a GSM mast for mobile (cellular) phones but I cannot think how that could have had an affect. Perhaps the transmission was a harmonic? Decreasing the bandwidth to exclude the noise worked well. I feel lethargic.
2024-07-19 12:35:34
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Blue sky, hot. The city is heating up again. Yet the park, usually busy on such days, is quiet. Presumably many residents are already on holiday. Summer holidays are taken seriously in Vienna. Its shops and restaurants can shut completely, sometimes for more than a month, only reopening in September. This ritual of city life and work grinding to a halt in high summer as people take in long holidays, is a side of Austrian culture that is, perhaps, less well know and more associated with our hotter neighbour, Italy. I hide the ground station's hardware under the shade of a plant, and limit my time in the sun by leaving as soon as the satellite pass is over. I am tried and a little nauseous today, but in the openness of the park these feelings are less.
2024-06-30 11:34:24
Soph Dyer
Hanging out of the window, sun on my face, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I woke relieved to see a cloudy sky and even a few drops of rain. By eleven o'clock the sky had mostly cleared and the temperature is rising again. I feel the heat on my face as I lean out of the window to receive this image. My left arm turned to jelly as I tried to maintain the pose, thrusting my antenna as far East as possible. The Kestrels nesting in the building across the street made frequent alarm calls. Two flying ants danced around the stone work below me. It's Sunday, but N and I leave for Split by train tonight, so I am working a funding application. Sasha, I know that my contributions have been inconsistent recently. It's possible that I have been struggling with low moods more than I let on. They come to me at dusk like low pressure fronts, and often pass by the time I have finished my morning coffee. I am not depressed nor unhappy, I just think too much. The pain I have weathered for the last year has surely left it's mark. 37 days until the operation.
2024-06-28 12:01:02
Soph Dyer
In the heat of Augarten, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
As I write this weather note there is a warm wind and the temperature has dropped. In the park, I could see large cloud to my West. It might have been a cumulonimbus but its top was cirrus-like and its shape not well defined. The heat is waking me early. This morning instead of rising, I read the news in bed. President Biden has performed poorly in a debate about Trump, unnerving even his allies. The American Democratic Party is panicking. If the situation wasn't so terrifying, it would be funny. Writing this note is taking longer that is should as I feel so drowsy. I have drunk a mate tea to wake-up, however it seems to be having opposite effect. The wind has dropped and the sun is shining again. I could fall asleep at my desk.
2024-06-27 20:55:10
Soph Dyer
Sitting on the window ledge, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
It's a warm evening and the street is loud. Starlings, children, adults shouting, car tyres screeching. The humidity has felt oppressive. As I recorded the image the sky was clouding over. The clouds are dramatic, they look high defintion and high contrast. They are moving quickly. I felt one large drop of rain on my way home, but that's it so far.
2024-06-20 12:00:35
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It's a balmy temperature, just warmer than my body. The sky is hazy and there is a cool breeze. The weather is mild, but I feel enraged. At breakfast, I let rage well up inside of me as I read the New York Times newsletter's coverage of crisis of aid not reaching people inside Gaza. In my lay opinion, the article's conclusion is morally and legally bankrupt. I have worked on armed conflicts for the last seven years and yesterday, in preparation for a consultancy job, I read 'SOUTH AFRICA’S COMMENTS ON THE REPLY BY ISRAEL TO THE QUESTION POSED BY JUDGE NOLTE AT THE END OF THE ORAL HEARINGS HELD ON 17 AND 18 MAY 2024'. In short, denying civilians access to medical services and humanitarian aid is punitive and illegal. End of. I suspect different colours of my rage are interconnected, like clouds of a cyclonic weather system. For example, I have such bad cycling rage at the moment and it’s very misandrist. Everything time a male cyclist overtakes me at the traffic lights and then proceeds to cycle slower then me – a regular occurrence – I mentally flip-out and practice the cycling equivalent of tailgating. I should stop this and find a better outlet for this negative energy. Recently, I chased down a male cyclist who had, unprovoked, shouted at me. Sadly, he didn’t notice and it was me who turned into a one way street in the wrong direction. I could continue to list the things that have provoked rage in me, but there is little point as they are proxies for greater, less direct injustices.
2024-06-06 20:50:00
Soph Dyer
Issey Sushi & Co, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
My sister, R, and her partner, B, are visiting from Cornwall. They have come to see me and N, with the hope of drying out after the wettest spring on record in the UK. They both work on the land so are very exposed to the recent extreme weather. R has decides to me how the land, after being so waterlogged has now dried smooth and cracked making planing difficult. Plus, the warm wet weather has caused the local slug populations to explode. I’ve been having nightmares of the weather being so terrible when they visit that R decides to emigrate with B to Australia. At least the first part of the nightmare comes true. R, B and me are trapped in a restaurant shop as the heavens open and day turns to night. Only an hour earlier we’d been swimming in an outdoor pool. Now the road is a torrent of grey water. A standing wave forms where the pavement used to begin. Everyone in the restaurant is watching the storm, impressed by its power. The lightening strikes close, the thunder cracking overheard with almost no delay. The limbs of trees flail, adding to the drama. R says that the sorting of sushi boxes into the square bags of delivery drivers looks like a three dimensional game of Tetris. At some point the delivery drivers must have headed into the storm as when I look up from trying to photograph the rain, they’re gone. When the rain lessens we pay up and leave. The rain has stopped but the lightening continues to flash until after midnight. I give up the idea of sticking an antenna out of the window and decode to upload this weather note instead.
2024-06-07 10:10:13
Soph Dyer
In the moist air of the park, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I miss the beginning of the satellite pass, but enjoy sitting in the humid, sun. It’s deceptively warm. The image crop is awkward but perfectly frames the Mediterranean Basin and Black Sea. In the ‘visible channel’ there are few clouds, however the infrared channel reveals of wispy veil of cloud over most of the continent. North Africa is cloudless.
2024-06-05 11:49:10
Soph Dyer
Pedestrian crossing, by work, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It’s noon and the weather is hot and steamy. My head is fuzzy from drinking pink Prosecco with M for her 40th birthday. My antenna is clutching a roadside pole next to the pedestrian crossing outside our studio. An older woman crosses the road, stooped and slow. She must have felt my gaze on her back, as she turns her face folded into a warm smile. I smile back. Trades people and children pass, openly curious but mostly unsmiling. I note how an electric scooter and hybrid bus cause bands of radio frequency interference.
2024-06-04 23:33:06
Soph Dyer
On the balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
On WhatsApp, I write to my brother: "It rained so heavily in the night our flat was saturated by the sound. I half expected to wake to flooded streets".
2024-06-03 20:48:20
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I have skipped two days of weather notes. It’s Monday. Thunder rolls as Sasha and I frequency shift from one open-weather Zoom call after another. First we heard from L and D in Scotland about how the satellite image decoder is up and running, and the redesign of the Public Archive is almost complete! We then spoke to G in Berlin who shared with us the code that he is writing for the automatic satellite ground stations. Together we started to speculate about how the 3D printed casing of the satellite ground stations could be. We imagine the ground station box resting on a bedroom bookshelf or mounted the wall of an art gallery. We tingled with excitement, encouraging each other in the game of visualising the work complete. In between, Sasha and I spoke with J, a curator in Barcelona who is planning an exhibition on the themes of navigation and orientation … let's see. I took some Ibuprofen to avert a migraine and then couldn't stop sneezing. Sasha giggle when, I turned of my camera instead of muting and loudly blew my running nose. As my work day ended, the thunder storm moved overhead. On a call with just Sasha , we draw on our remaining brain power and belief, I shared my proposal for a sounded-based transmission for the Year of Weather project. Inspired by the desire to 'meet people where they are' and by how past feminist alliances such as F.I.R.E. in Costa Rica and Pirate Radio Women in Ireland used radio to share with their community counter narratives and information, the transmission would share our weather notes intermingled with the realtime local weather updates of a meteorology service. A second important reference is the "VOLMET" radio broadcasts that are rolling weather forecasts for aircraft, read out often by highly gendered and increasingly automated female voices. Before hanging up, Sasha and I began to test the proposal and to think through different scenarios. I had planned to squeeze in a hours more work but my brother called and we spoke almost two hours. It rare that we speak for so long on the phone, so the call was special. Lightening seemed to knock of the signal so I move around the flat, searching for a more stable signal, plugging in my phone to different wall sockets.
2024-05-29 11:35:05
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It is sunny. A few white and grey clouds move across an otherwise deep blue sky. A cool wind raises the hairs on my arms. As I receive the radio transmission, I imagine NOAA-18’s rapidly changing location. “Are you over Latvia or Lithuania? Perhaps now Belarus?” I ask. “What do you see?” The questions are not rhetorical nor do I expect a reply. I list the countries its invisible trajectory crosses: Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria. The satellite’s signal begins to stretch, its wavelength subtly lengthening as it moves away from me. “Have you crossed into Greece?” I ask. “Are you over the blackness of the Mediterranean Sea?” My line-of-sight with the NOAA-18 is unbroken as looks down on Cairo and Egypt, then, it its East, Gaza and Israel. Here, I loose its signal and my line-of-sight. Later, I look up the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, and re-read ‘Poetic Regulations’ “The stars had only one task: they taught me how to read. They taught me I had a language in heaven and another language on earth. Who am I? Who am I? I don’t want to answer yet. May a star fall into itself, and may a forest of chestnut trees rise in the night toward the Milky Way with me, and may it say: Remain here!”
2024-06-01 21:11:06
Soph Dyer
Sitting on the window ledge, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Today hasn’t been easy. The weather is sodden and my mood is low. I almost miss the satellite pass and make a last minute decision to try and receive the transmission from the flat. Sat on the window ledge, precariously positioned over the wet street three stories below, I receive an imperfect image. I am glad.
2024-05-27 20:32:49
Soph Dyer
Sitting on the window ledge, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Humid, blue, warm skies. Tired, achy, loose body. Humid and tried, blue and achy, warm and loose. There is lightening interference from a storm to my West. I read the news, not making it more than a few paragraphs. "The Israeli missiles struck tents in an area to the west of Rafah city that was supposed to be safe from attack". "[A]t least eight missiles struck the camp – a designated safe zone – on Sunday night at about 8.45pm local time (17:45 GMT). "Witnesses described charred bodies and flames. A doctor said the majority of the victims he saw were women and children". (The New York Times, 27 May 2024) “'We pulled out people who were in an unbearable state,' Mohammed Abuassa told the Associated Press. 'We pulled out children who were in pieces. We pulled out young and elderly people. The fire in the camp was unreal.'” (Associated Press via The Guardian 27 May 2024) Judith Butler asks, “Whose lives are regarded as lives worth saving and defending, and whose are not?” They continue: “One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable… We can see the division of the globe into grievable and ungrievable lives from the perspective of those who wage war in order to defend the lives of certain communities, and to defend them against the lives of others—even if it means taking those latter lives.” (Butler, 2009)
2024-05-27 20:45:48
Soph Dyer
Leaning out of the window, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
My image contains interference from lightening strikes. I have likely seen lightening interference before, but it a first for me to be able to confirm it. The sky above our house was blue but to the East I could see dark storm clouds. Each time the clouds flashed orange, even though they they were too far for thunder to be audible, I could 'hear' the strikes as bursts of radio noise. I have uploaded a photo of the waterfall display clearly showing a horizontal line of interference from a lightening strike. In the decoded imagery, the lightening is visible as broken lines, not more than a one to two pixels wide. Given the position of NOAA-19, the storm must have been between me and the it. I should note that that last photo of the storm clouds almost overhead was taken more than 10 minutes after I had finished recording and packed away my antenna. Under no circumstances is it wise to point an antenna in the proximity of a storm. I admit that the speed of the storm clouds surprised me. As they approached, a warm wind got up and shook trees on the street below, while I watched neighbours rush to closed windows on flapping curtains. The change in light levels was dramatic too. In less than half an hour, day turned to night.
2024-05-23 21:21:17
Soph Dyer
Friedhof Hernals (Hernals Cemetery), Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Again, my phone's weather app says that it will rain, but the day turns out fine. I doubt the algorithm's ability to account for the dramatic effect of the Alps on Vienna's weather. There can be huge thunderstorms only a couple hundred kilometres South, and Vienna will be basking in sunshine. My day, too, defies my expectations. I woke early, rough, the swelling in eye gone down but the pain in my side throbbing. Yet work was good and afterwards I cycle to an outdoor pool, then indulged in sushi at a neighbourhood restaurant with N. I received this image from a hilltop cemetery. In the silence afterwards, stood on a path between the flickering of red lamps of graves, I feel time thicken. I am reminded of how Libyan author Hisham Matar, when stood at a cemetery's edge, asks "What is it to remember the dead?" For Matar, "the scale is unfathomable". It is "[d]eath’s endless appetite", he writes. "The deceased outnumber the living by such a scale that the present suddenly seemed to me to be the golden rim of a cloth". (Matar 2019)
2024-05-22 09:25:54
Soph Dyer
At home, Hernals, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
The air is fresh. Broken sun and wind. I left the bedroom window open during the night and half-asleep-half-awake dreamt of a fierce wind, rain lashing the window, and flying debris. I have been thinking and writing about 'fire weather'. This morning, staring my left eye that had swollen shut in the night, for not apparent reason, I wondered if inflammation is a an internal, bodily fire weather.
2024-05-21 13:12:14
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Its humid, muggy, close or "schwül" as my German speking studio mate, DD, said before we tried to find a good translation. Weather words rarely seem to translate one-to-one. Or, perhaps this is true for all words, and the high situated, experiential nature of weather exposes the limits of translation. Perhaps then we should get better at learning each other words for weather? Extend our fluency in talking about the 'ever starnger weather' and decoding memories of past weather. Or, maybe we should not rely too heavily on words to communicate weather? After all, its so bodily. Here, it is getting 'muggier'. I am going home as I feel a heaache coming on.
2024-05-20 11:44:50
Soph Dyer
Diepoldpark, by the picnic benches, Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Happy launch-day satellite NOAA-18! It's been 19 years since on this day in 2005 you were launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Your planned mission was only two years, yet you are still transmitting. Back on Earth, I have cast aside my mum's landline telephone, for a Motorola mobile, for a my first smart phone (a friend's hand-me-down), for an iPhone 13. Can you imagine? It's a pocket-sized radio transceiver that has more computing power than Apollo 11. Dear NOAA-18, radio technology has not only transformed how we make phone calls, it has become cheap and easy to combine with code. While you have been in orbit, software defined radio has become a truly low cost alternative to conventional radio – it is what makes this project, open-weather, possible. Perhaps you already know this since last year, the American government outsourced the management of your data to the longtime defence contractor, Parsons Corporation. Parsons enrolled you in trial cloud-based ground system that is running off Microsoft Azure. As I mentioned in a previous Weather Note, Microsoft has announced that it is building a 'Planetary Computer'. Given your involvement in the trial, it is probable that in your "extended life" you are helping to build this 'digital double' of Earth. Next year, in September, the contract awarded to Parsons to maintain you expires. September 2025 could be date of your mission, but we don't that as information is hard to find. (Parsons, 2022; NOAA, 2023; NCEI, 2023). If true, you have one more birthday to celebrate. Until next year NOAA-18!
2024-05-19 22:10:44
Soph Dyer
On the window sill, Hernals, Vienna, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I willed myself to stay awake to capture the transmission, even if I knew that it would likely be more noise than image because of the low elevation of the satellite. I missed yesterday. Another absence in the archive due to another night's sleep lost to discomfort. The weather was better than expected today, so I dragged my body out of the house into the city and into contact with other bodies. I went to a beautifully queer refugee football tournament with M, where we sat in the sun and sweated; a solo swim in the cooling waters of Kongreßbad; to the Kino de France where I sat in the airless dark and watched GUAPO’Y by Peruvian director Sofía Paoli Thorne, my body tensing at the noise of a young guy in the row in front, munching popcorn; and lastly to the warmth of friend's flat for a takeaway curry with her adorable two-year-old. I am particularly excited about my first swim at Kongreßbad. It's incredible outdoor pool complex opened in 1928 during the 'Red Vienna' years, when the Social Democratic Workers' Party of Austria (SDAP) governed the city. Despite my sleeplessness, it has been a full day. I meditate on this and give my thanks as I receive NOAA-19.
2024-05-17 12:22:00
Soph Dyer
Augarten by the flowers, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Dust, grey skies, low light. I am reading over lunch an article on Microsoft's Planetary Computer, shared with me by Sasha. I began reading it during my last hospital appointment, which felt appropriate as, in my experience, hospitals are sites dislocation, dissociation and disorientation (as well as the putting back together of bodies). The authors are arguing for "pluralising the planetary" and recognising its "radical incompleteness"; they are favouring "messy operation(s)" over smooth form (Richardson and Munster, 2023). I message Sasha extracts, so as to not forget them and share resonances. The first reads "a computational enclosure reimagined as liberation".
2024-05-15 21:23:30
Soph Dyer
On the balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Apparenly poets and shopping centre security guards can be assassins too. The media are reporting that there has been an assasination attempt on the incoming Prime Minister of Slovakia. The location is a few hundred kilometres from Vienna. News feeds identify the assassin not by name but by his profession: shopping centre security guard and poet. Poignantly, NOAA-19 passed between Vienna and Bratislava. I am certain that saw the satellite. I had set an alarm on my phone for the satellite pass but when it rang I had just drained a pan of boiled asparagus, so I gave into to hunger and ate dinner. After finishing, I ran outside to catch the second half of the pass. I used the new cable Sasha has sent me. It is a clear night and a gentle temperature. Earlier, I swam in the Danube. It was windy and spray forced my eyes shut. I had the water to myself, save for a swan and passing cyclists and whatever or whoever was lurking below. I dived in a couple of times before almost slipping on the plastic pontoon. Swimming is perhaps the most effective way I deal with pain. I hope today is the last day of my period-related pains and restless nights. My body is aching to begin the slow process of unknotting itself.
2024-05-16 12:32:00
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It didn't record, which was such a shame as the satellite pass was long and a sweet 60 degrees to my West. The weather is here warm, gusty and cloudy. The weather app on my phone says that it'll be cloudy for the next two weeks – I hope not. After reading a news story on how people with freckles are at high risk of skin damage, I purchased a pocket-sized tube of sun cream. I am ready for the sun and now its gone. The Slovakian Prime Minister has survived the attack on his life. The latest reports suggest the gunman is in his 70s. It is likely that he grew up in the Soviet era Czechoslovakia and lived through the 'Gentle Revolution', possibly even the 1968 Prague Spring.
2024-05-14 22:49:02
Soph Dyer
On my balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I saw NOAA-18. I tuned off the lights and then, like magic, mid-pass, a white dot appeared almost directly overhead. I could keep eyes on it for several minutes. The satellite glided across the sky, so much faster than I had imagine. It makes sense, that the satellite appears to accelerate when directly overhead and then slow down as it approaches the horizon. Despite this logic, I had always imagined it moving at a constant speed, like the hand of a clock. I am twitching with excitement.
2024-05-13 23:01:31
Soph Dyer
Balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Sun, clouds, and a cool wind. Today is a day of body euphoria. This has become a monthly ritual and one I should get better at celebrating. I am back inside my body and its a wonderous feeling: I have energy and I feel (almost) clear headed. After a long day of work calls, I made it out of the house around 7:45 pm to buy food from the local supermarket before close. On my way home, the sun was low, hidden, except for explosions of gold at the end of every side street. I walked slowly and took in the soothing quality of the light.
2024-05-12 23:13:34
Soph Dyer
My flat, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
My hormones have been so low, I have felt dislocated from my body. Come this evening I finally felt a little better. Last night, I was up until 2am watching the Northern Lights or Polarlitchter from a north-facing window in our flat. I was incredibly lucky as I hadn't seen the space weather forecast, but a friend messaged, "Don’t forget there might be polar lights tonight!". At first, I thought that she had misunderstood – we're too far South. Google affirmed my skepticism. Still, it was a clear night so I looked outside. At first, I could see nothing. After around five minutes a bright pink glow appeared behind the rooftops. I completely freaked out. N and I dropped our plans to sleep and ran to a local sports ground. We were both in a state of shock and awe. In my elation called Sasha, texted my family in the UK "Look North!", patronised N for using a flash, and garbled "Danke" to a groundsman who was explaining that we needed to leave as he was locking up. We headed to a local park but the lights had dimmed to a level were I wasn't sure if I could still see them or the pink glow had burned itself into my imagination. Back at home they flared again, this time visible from the flat. N went to bed but I stayed up watching. The pink became almost as vivid as in the long exposure photos I had been taking. White shafts of light appeared and disappeared, so did a fainter green glow. My skin tingles just thinking about it.
2024-05-10 12:09:30
Soph Dyer
Just off Obere Augartenstraß, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Woke up to Netanyahu's face on the front page of the Guardian. Felt grim despair. Got up, messaged my sister, made a medical appointment, and went to the studio. I received this image on my way in. Veronika, my studio mate, had made spare lunch so we ate together with her collaborator, T. Being cooked food quiets the soul. My hormones at still languishing somewhere at the bottom of the mid Atlantic trench. I feel dreadful. It's a beautifully sunny, clear day.
2024-05-06 19:19:44
Soph Dyer
On the corner of Diepold Park, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Bright sunlight, thunder booms and rain drops the size of marbles. Israel has ordered civilians to leave Rafah, but to where? In Vienna, European Election posters line the larger streets: Patriotisch, Zusammen in Europa, … I will try to collect the slogans.
2024-05-05 19:47:02
Soph Dyer
Reclaimed community garden, Hernals, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
First day of summer, first mosquito bite of the 2024, my first ever swim in the Alte Donau (Old Danube). The forecast on my phone predicted rain at 3pm, but the clouds passed us and Veronika, her dog and I enjoyed several hours at the Alte Donau. We made the most of the cooling clear waters before they turn murky with summer algae and river weed. I didn't realise until I got home, how much my face had 'caught the sun'. I received an broken-up transmission from NOAA-15 in a long abandoned building lot, recently commandeered as an unofficial community garden. On the way home, I could see a towering anvil cloud to the South. Tomorrow should be sunny, despite multiple storms in the region.
2024-05-04 21:54:40
Soph Dyer
On the balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I think I saw NOAA-19! I was looking at the sky at exactly where I imagined NOAA-19 to be, 50 degrees above the horiszon to my West, and there was a faint white dot moving steady across the sky. It's a clear night but there visibility isn't exceptional and the stairwell lights of the neighbouring building kept turning on making it harder to see the stars. Yet, the position and velocity matched those of NOAA-19. I could only track the faint point of light for a few seconds before loosing it. Sasha and I have speculated about what it would be like to 'return the gaze'. I felt that I was locking eyes with an old but elusive friend. I need to think more about this moment and what it means to watch a satellite, watching earth. Watching you, watching me. I was so concentrated that I forgot to take any documentary photo. So, I've uploaded a photo from earlier in the day of me shoving free compost from the city's recycling centre.
2024-05-03 10:38:36
Soph Dyer
Schillerplatz, Institut für Kunst und Architektur (Institute for Art and Architecture), Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
This image was received during a workshop with third year architecture students at the Akademie der bildenden Künste. It is raining heavily, however we got lucky with the weather and satellite orbits. During a dry moment between down pours and drizzle, we stood in Schillerplatz and pointed the turnstile antenna toward NOAA-19. For some reason the signal to noise ratio was poor. I will try to understand why, perhaps the dongle I was using has seen one too many workshops. We tried later in the day with v-dipoles and the students got clear images, so, it must have been my set-up. A noisy image can be intersting in a workshop. Overall we had a good day. During the WebSDR exercise the students heard lots of radio amateur chatter, including two men with heavy British accents talking about one of the men's father passing away. Another students heard a man in Germany describing how the Rhine River had flooded his cellar. All in all, it was a very radio active workshop.
2024-05-02 12:07:54
Soph Dyer
On the corner of , Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It remains windy today. I learned today that the expression "winds of change", which I had taken as old adage, was coined in 1969 by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. In a speech in Cape Town, Macmillan referred to the "wind of change […] blowing through this continent", in reference to the decolonisation of Africa. Now I know the expressions origin, I am wary of how it naturalises a social-political struggle, making it feel as inevitable as the changing of weather patterns. I am reminded of a poster I picked up in a corridor in Goldsmiths after the terrible passing of Mark Fisher. Printed in riso red, the poster reads "emancipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessary and inevitable to be a mere contingency, just as it must make what was previously deemed to be impossible seem attainable" (Fisher 2009). I see traces of the Polar Jet Stream in the clouds in the satellite image. Or rather jet streams in plural because the more I read the weather and its winds, the more my imagination of a single wind, a kind of wind super highway, breaks down. Instead I see many jet streams: curling and unravelling, breaking up and rejoining, strengthening and weakening. Sasha has shared with me an article on 'global stilling': a prediction that the climate crisis will cause global winds the weaken and possibly, eventually, still.
2024-05-01 19:47:52
Soph Dyer
My flat, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
It's 1 May or Workers' Day or Labour Day. It's still novel for me live in a country that celebrates the 1 May with a national holiday and street parties. I cycled into my studio and instantly felt guilty for working, as if I were a 'scab'. Vienna has a festive, carefree atmosphere. I crossed two rallies for the Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ) and for the KOMintern at Sigmund-Freud-Park. According to a crude translation of their German-langauge website, the KOMintern is a "combative, internationalist association and trade union fighting alliance of working people, councils, the unemployed and trade union political activists". The weather is sun with some cloud and wind. If I had a barometer, it would have pointed to "Change".
2024-04-30 22:25:17
Soph Dyer
Beside the Rathaus, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
As I receive the satellite transmission, I listen to pop music from a large concert for the SPÖ youth organisations. To get to the street corner we walk through groups of teens. In the shadows of the park they could have passed as much older, but occasional childish impulse to jostle, shout or run after one other gave them away. I read that each year the socialist youth organisation's march through the city with torches, this year their motto is 'Vienna against the Right' or „Wien gegen Rechts“.
2024-04-29 21:16:51
Soph Dyer
Diepoldplatz, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
2024-04-28 19:26:34
Soph Dyer
On my balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Sun. I sat in the sun and willed my vitamin D level to rise. I have been feeling under the weather since Friday and blame it on a lack of vitamin D. After sunset the temperature dropped quickly, then stabilised. N and I sat on the balcony without the lights off and watched the stars for a good hour. Bored from bring at home all day resting for the day, I used the broken co-ax cable, magnet wire from Shortwave Collective and some copper tape to improvise a full wave length v-dipole antenna. I can't find any documentation online of full wavelengt v-dipoles to receive NOAA POES satellites, so maybe it is not a good design. I recived a faint, noisy signal from NOAA-15. Perhaps the poor signal was because I had accidentally cut the dipole wire 30cm too short or becasue the balcony didn't allow for a true North-South orientation. Regardless, the anntena was satisfyingly sculptural.
2024-04-27 23:04:59
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-04-26 20:17:23
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
2024-04-25 10:36:33
Soph Dyer
On my balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Sehr geehrte W, Ich habe im Januar dieses Jahres eine QFH-Antenne und zwei Zwischenkabel bei Ihnen bestellt. Ich fürchte, dass ich einige Probleme hatte. Ich habe ein schlechtes SNR bei Verwendung des QFH und eines der Zwischenkabel ist kaputt. Ich befürchte, dass ich möglicherweise die internen Lötverbindungen an der QFH-Antenne gebrochen habe, obwohl ich nicht glaube, dass sich die Buchsen im Kunststoffteil verdrehen. Haben Sie einen Rat? Wie kann man beispielsweise das Problem eingrenzen? Sasha Engelmann und ich nutzen Ihre Antennen schon seit vielen Jahren und hatten vorher keine Probleme. Vielen Dank für jede Hilfe. Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Sophie Dyer
2024-04-24 19:27:05
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Athens is enveloped in Saharan dust, but it remains so cold here! On Friday it is forecast to drop as low as 1C degrees. An Austrian friend told me that it has snowed nearer the Alps, harming the fruits trees, which had budded early and were already in full leaf. On an emotional level the cold and damp is making me want to curl up and stay away from more energetic tasks, such as work and exercise. I checked 'wind map' to improve understanding hoping that this would bring me comfort. The slick data visualisation shows cold air coming from the artic, passing Sasha in London, before arriving in Southern and Central Europe. Sasha are you cold?
2024-04-23 20:52:44
Soph Dyer
Lorenz-Bayer-Park, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
The software defined radio app I was running on my phone crashed as two teenage boys walked right up to N and I and got in our faces. I was a wary. "I'm from Tschetschenien (Chechnya)" one of the boys said. When I told them that I was from the UK, they proceeded to speak in awe about how "you know in London you get stabbed, just like that". When I said that we had lived in South East London they were unduly impressed. The boys willingness to come into our personal space made some sense when they told us that they were on drugs. I asked what and they said cocaine and then, as if to prove it, did a line in front of us on the picnic table. We chatted, I tried to restart the software defined radio and recorded this image (the first recording had corrupted), they offered us a cigarette. The satellite dipped below the horizon. We wished each other "Schön'n Abend", and N and I left the two boys in the darkness of the park.
2024-04-22 22:21:27
Soph Dyer
Hanging out of my window, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Clear skies, still cold. I am tired yet relaxed. It is a long day. In the afternoon and evening I helped to remotely interview applicants for the design school where I teach. Every 15 minutes a student joined the call from a different location: Moscow, Guangzhou, a city I can't recall in Canada, then maybe Barcelona, Offenbach in Germany, a few streets away from me in Vienna, the list went on. Our questions were a variation of: why this course now? The answers overlapped, but the reasons for studying and urgencies were diverse, so too were the concerns about visas, queerness or work after graduation. About half of the candidates expressed a desire to develop a personal creative practice while the others leant toward collaborative or collective work. It is exciting to hear so many desires in one day.
2024-04-17 13:33:12
Soph Dyer
In the car park Hotel Mariënhage, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
The Netherlands
NOAA-18
I caught the image between bursts of rain. Drowsy after the night train from Vienna, I enjoy catching rays in the hotel car park. The air is moist and fresh. The clouds few but ripe. Tomorrow my experimental and sometimes unwieldy Critical Cartographies course at Design Academy Eindhoven ends. I'm excited to see the students work, its always energising and surprising. Hopefully they've enjoyed the experience as much as me.
2024-04-16 12:08:18
Soph Dyer
Local park, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Can relief be an atmosphere? If so, it is enveloping me. I finally managed to speak to someone who would about my health insurance problem. I think that an end could be insight. It is dry but the clouds are low and the temperature has dropped significantly, again. These days I am alternating between shorts and tee shirts and a heavy winter coat.
2024-04-15 22:08:13
Soph Dyer
Hanging out of my window, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
A sunny morning was followed by heavy rain in the late afternoon. At one point, I opened the window facing onto the street and smelled cut grass, which is strange as there are no parks nearby. Before leaving the flat to attend a fundraising meeting, I check the weather radar on my phone and see two large bands of rain almost upon Vienna. Geopolitics is even stormy today. Israel is threatening retaliation against Iran, and stories of dissidents being silenced in Russia and Belarus are in the news. Meanwhile, here, Austria is keeling over to the right. Today, I also learned that abortion is still illegal in Germany.
2024-04-11 10:04:37
Soph Dyer
Resting on the grass, Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Israel-Palestine, Gulf of Suez, Cairo. Each image yeilds a different combination of landforms, coastlines, rivers and seas by which to orientate by. In land, light and dark patches index dry steppes and deserts, river basins thick with vegetation and cities. I did not capture an image yesterday because I was feeling worn down. In the morning, I had another emergency appointment to diagnose my chronic pain. To express my anger and dispair, I wrote a poem. I am submitting this word-image in place of yesterday's image: 'Try this' It's not an emergency the doctor concluded. / I become so submissive during medical appointments, it was / only when I left the hospital, and / lost another night's sleep to pain, that / I felt like crying and shouting. / Try living with this pain? / Try working after lying awake for multiple nights because / you cannot sleep because / the pain is gnawing at your insides. / Try living with this pain / for more than five years and being told by medical professionals (who you naively assumed would help) / that it is stress, / indigestion, / "your body is changing as you age", / "I have reassured Ms Dyer that the pain is nothing to worry about." / Try living with this pain and repeating those claims. / Screw your lack of emergency. / The discharge note I was sent home with yesterday said I had / blood in my "Douglas Pouch" and advised an operation / using a "DiVinci robot". / How fitting that my body part is named after a man / and the machine that will be used to to probe, cut, mince, remove the my offending flesh is named after a 'male genius'. / Try weathering this climate of sexism. / Try weathering a climate of sexism / in which women's health issues such as endometriosis are still so poorly researched and understood. / Try living with this pain, / then tell me that this not an emergency.
2024-04-03 08:43:01
Soph Dyer
Rossauer Brücke, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
It is beautifully clear and sunny. I woke early feeling rested after a good swim in the Stadthallenbad last night, which surely helped rid my body of stress hormones. This morning, I stopped on a bridge on the way into the studio to receive an image from NOAA-15. I've noticed that its imagery appears degraded, less detailed, compared to the other two satellites. At this time of day, the sunlight bounces off the Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas creating a white flare around the the coastline of Crete and other Greek islands. No Saharan Dust was visible in the image, just two large anticyclonic clouds.
2024-04-02 09:10:37
Soph Dyer
Dornerplatz, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
It rained all night. Not "blood rain" coloured by Saharn Dust, normal rain. I sat on a bench in Dornerplatz and received the satellite image in the sun and wind. The sky is a true blue this morning. Seeing it made me realise how grey and brown it has been the last couple of days. It's amazing how quickly one can forget the colour of the sky, and then be shocked by its rediscovery. In The Memory Police by Japanese author Yōko Ogawa, a community living under a phantasmagorical authoritian leader slowly forget the existance of mundane things: hat, ribbon, bird, rose. These things disappear in the night. Once they are gone they no longer have meaning. In the community, forgetting is policed and takes three stages (1) the erasure of the thing (2) the erasure of the memory of the thing (3) the erasure of the memory of the memory of the thing. The news this morning is all about the war in Ukraine and the war in Palestine, and how Israel had killed Iranian Military Commanders in Syria. Iran has sworn to take punitive action against the United States. [Interval] Three people close to me messaged today to say that someone they knew had died. I have sent my condolences, even thought this never feels enough. Today, has grown into a day marked by learning of the passing of people who I will never know. I am writing this down as a minor act of recognition and remembrance.
2024-04-01 19:19:06
Soph Dyer
Ferienhaus Post Sozial, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
A cold wind cuts through my flimsy Uniqlo jacket, making me shiver during the satellite pass. Only three hours earlier, I'd been sat on our balcony in shorts and a cut-off tee-shirt, reading Lucy Sabin and Jorge Olcina Cantos' article 'Weathering Saharan dust beyond the Spanish Mediterranean Basin: An interdisciplinary dialogue'. In it, they paraphrase Michael Marder writing that "to face dust is to face not the Other, but the self" (Marder, 2016: 6) Taken out of context, for me, there is something liberating in the idea that we can change state, transmutate, to the extent that we are unrecognisablle, even to ourselves. Back in inside the flat, a change in the soundscape of the street alerts to the rain. Perhaps a interin "cold drop" or the end of the dust weather. N and I take the opportunity to return to the balcony in raincoats and, under the cover of darkness, throw fists fulls of flower seeds into the empty lot next door. Last year, when the old building that had to occupied the lot was being torn down, angry, I had bought online two litres of wildflower seeds. Now we were completing the plan. The seeds rained down, hopefully accomopanied by nutrient rich Saharan Dust.
2024-03-31 12:04:22
Soph Dyer
Asperleiten (favourite place), Wienerwald, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
We went seeking satellites and Saharan Dust. Last night, I discovered the chrome mudguards of my bicycle patterned with rust coloured droplets. N said that they look like small galaxies. Now we are walking to my favourite tree-lined field in the Wienerwald (Vienna Woods). The light levels have increased, but even when the sun is out there is a thick haze. On reaching the field, I slip on a golden vest, clip belt and tool pouch. The beautifully gender neutralising astronaut-athleisure 'look' is intended to disrupt the documentary style photos we are about to take. Stood in the centre of the field among tubular Cowslip flowers, I scan the Northern horizon with the antenna while N snaps away on my iPhone. I almost forget to adjust the antenna's Gain. When I do, NOAA-18 appears. We spend the next 10 minutes enacting a satellite hunt, much to the confusion of a couple who walk past twice with two yapping lap dogs. The results of the very real satellite hunt photoshoot are great. To have spotted the iron and mineral-rich Dust cloud in imagery two days ago, and to now be immersed in it, to be experiencing it as 'weather', is uncanny. The walk to the bus home is longer and sweatier than I expected. A warm wind is being drawn North, and presumably with it the dust – a billion small crystalline galaxies.
2024-03-30 11:17:58
Soph Dyer
Diepoldpark, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Why is it that I am so low energy? The sunlight that has made it through the dense semicircle-shaped cloud over Vienna is dim and omnidirectional. It's warm and humid. I woke early and could not fall back asleep. I had hoped to begin the day clear headed, ready to write. Yesterday, after uploading my satellite recording to this archive, I noticed a large plume of Saharan Dust over the Mediterranean. I wrote to Sasha who relied saying that she had not spotted the cloud in her imagery had observed a "light sprinkling" of a reddish dust on the snow. We share an interest in the ways satellite imagery is, “drawn to the dust, the particulate, which it has itself apparently become.” (Leslie, 2021: 102). I want to get better at reading particles, not just pixels.
2024-03-29 11:28:18
Soph Dyer
Usual spot, Augarten, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It feels like the first day of spring, again. It is windy but sunny, warm and dry. I sit on the stone flowerbed in the park and receive a long image with the satellite just under 70 degrees to my West. Stupidly, knowing that we had to get up early this morning to view two flats, I worked late last night and then doom scrolled the Internet. Now, I am tried and annoyed with myself. I have been feeling unsettle for multiple days now, I hope this feeling passes. This afternoon I must focus on writing an essay for open-weather. I think that I will write about how NOAA-15, NOAA-18 and OAA-19 may be decommissioned as soon as September 2025. It is less the "ending", more the not knowing when it will happen that is a concern for the project.
2024-03-28 20:06:43
Soph Dyer
Standing outside my flat, in the rain, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I rush home from the tram in the wind and rain, hoping to leave my things inside before the satellite arrives. I don't make it so stand buffeted by the wind on a street corner. Cars pass me, headlights on. Despite the tall apartment buildings, I catch a strong signal and am feeling happy until, for reasons I don't understand (perhaps the wet) my phone crashes, ending the recording. The experience does not help my sense of being off kilter or out of sync.
2024-03-27 21:42:54
Soph Dyer
Malzgasse bus stop, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
"And this is how it sees storms!" I write to Michaela, sharing a vividly coloured enhancement of the satellite image that we had received earlier, standing at the bus stop outside our shared studio space. "That’s just another name for us", she replies with the wit of the screenwriter she is. I like this thought – that we are storms. Robert, standing next to me, looking at my laptop screen, points out the Gaza Strip. I dismissed his observation because the the section of image beneath the map overlay appears to be only noise. Later, when I turned off the map overlay, to my surpsie Gaza's coastline was still visible – noisy but indisputably present in the image. How many times has Gaza been visible, only for me to not see it? I have spent the day working remotely with colleagues in London on digital platform for investigations into Gaza War. And now, somehow, without realising, from my local bus stop I have formed an indirect yet unbroken line-of-sight with the Palestinian territory.
2024-03-25 22:09:44
Soph Dyer
Diepoldpark, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
It is still but cold. I receive the image in our local park, standing by the toilets. Earlier in the day, on the train platform in Brno, I see a man dressed like a cattle herder, in full leathers, carrying tall boots. At the vegetable market, I buy a woven fruit basket from aother burly man who shows me and N a photo of him dressed as Obelix the Gaul. Tomorrow is meant to be sunny.
2024-03-24 18:26:50
Soph Dyer
Tyršův sad, Brno, Czechia
Czechia
NOAA-15
I saw people carrying palms leaves and realised that its Palm Sunday. I am stood a well kept park at dusk. There is cut grass, old trees, and a goats in a petting zoo. Local dogs and their owners gather nearby. Its a full moon and the satellite transmission clear. The air feels moist, cool, spring-like.
2024-03-23 18:50:46
Soph Dyer
Pítko Letenské sady východ, Prague, Czechia
Czechia
NOAA-15
The cold wind cuts through the light clothes that I packed. N and I are staying in Prague's old town but have spent the evening in Holešovice district. There are lots of Ukrainian and Czechia flags in the windows and on buildings. I was reluctant to go on holiday and leave work but I'm glad I came. The writing block I have had is softening with conversation, reading time, and thoughts about unrelated things. I am unsticking myself.
2024-03-22 19:38:12
Soph Dyer
Leaning out of the window at home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
2024-03-21 11:26:48
Soph Dyer
Flowerbed, Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
My phone says that it's 3C but it feels warm in the heat of the sun. I take off my coat and sit on the edge of the stone flowerbed, taking in the bulbs that have sprouted, listening to the satellite's signal, and offering a polite smile to the people who stare as they walk past. I mostly get blank looks, but one older man returns a scowl. It is not just the rise in temperature that makes it feel like spring is here, the air is scented.
2024-03-20 18:26:26
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
It's so peaceful in the park. The air is rich and still. Dusk has always been my favourite time of day. I need this moment of stillness after working on a project about the war in Gaza. I feel a familiar combination of profound gratitude and guilt. The sky is clear, it helps me.
2024-03-19 21:44:25
Soph Dyer
Leaning out of the window, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I catch the last satellite pass of the day, dog tired. I am still waiting for a medical intervention to relive me of the pain that comes in night, preventing me from sleeping soundly. It is cold but clear out. I have given into the warmth of my flat and am leaing out of out the window. This morning on my way to the studio, I a man cycles past me carrying a full-sized bow and arrow.
2024-03-18 10:30:30
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I enter the radio frequency incorrectly and only discover half way through the satellite pass. My bike is leant against a Yew bush. The park is full of children and adult carers, sat on benches in the sun. In my usual spot there was an older woman talking animately to herself, I decide not to risk interupting her. The temperature has dropped, but the sky remains clear. I will call Sasha to discuss this project.
2024-03-16 18:33:56
Soph Dyer
Diepoldplatz, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Experimental copper tube v-dipole antenna.
2024-03-15 09:32:12
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
This is the first weather note I write in almost a month. The pansies have been planted out in Augarten. I rested my bike on the stone of circular flowerbed and used a mobile phone and my v-dipole antenna to receive a long image. I took with me a cooked painted egg, which I dropped in the gravel when peeling and had to throw away. It is a clear, sunny day.
2024-03-15 09:32:12
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
This is the first weather note I write in almost a month. The pansies have been planted out in Augarten. I rested my bike on the stone of a circular flowerbed and used a mobile phone and my v-dipole antenna to receive a long image. I take with me a painted cooked egg, which I drop in the gravel when peeling and have to throw away. It is a clear, sunny day.
2024-03-14 11:15:08
Soph Dyer
Augarten by the flowers, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I did not press 'stop recording' before closing SDR++, and so corrupted the file.
2024-03-07 10:59:59
Soph Dyer
Augarten by the trees, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-03-06 19:34:04
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
2024-03-05 22:09:44
Soph Dyer
Tyršův sad, Brno, Czechia
Czechia
NOAA-18
2024-03-05 11:27:55
Soph Dyer
On the balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-03-04 21:28:15
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-03-03 20:39:23
Soph Dyer
Diepoldpark, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-03-01 22:06:11
Soph Dyer
At home, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-02-29 18:41:05
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Leap day.
2024-02-22 22:05:16
Soph Dyer
Reaching out of the door, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
2024-02-21 08:10:33
Sasha Engelmann Soph Dyer
Wave Farm, Acra, New York, United States
United States
NOAA-15
Wave Farm was quiet on this Wednesday morning in February except for the 'whoosh' of sometimes-passing cars on route 23, and the chirping of finches and other birds. The grass outside the Wave Farm building was white and crunchy with frost. We were late to set up for the NOAA 15 pass , but as both our ground stations launched, NOAA-15's signal virtually lept into the waterfall displays on our laptops. We shuddered with cold as the pass progressed. The image captured from the V-dipole antenna I was using shows the outline of the east coast of the US and the impressively large fingerprints of the great lakes.
2024-02-21 08:09:54
Sasha Engelmann Soph Dyer
Wave Farm, Acra, New York, United States
United States
NOAA-15
2024-02-13 10:44:38
Soph Dyer
On my balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
QFH antenna test.
2024-02-07 21:47:26
Soph Dyer
On my balcony, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I was buffeted by mild but squally weather through the satellite pass. When I looked behind me the sky was ominously dark. For a moment, I thought that I should put down my antenna in case an electrical storm was coming, but none was forecast so I kept recording. It has been a tough day and I am feeling tired.
2024-02-01 11:30:57
Soph Dyer
Beside the round flowerbed in Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Wet! I have just come back inside from the satellite pass, dripping. I stood in Augarten park, in the intensifying rain, my laptop inside a small bin bag tent. From the warmth of my shared studio, I decoded the image. A huge white arc of water sweeps across my screen from North from Spain to Norway. Is this what it feels like to be at sea – to orientate by waves of water and light? Sometimes Sasha and I joke that open-weather is a queer, feminist space agency. Right now, I feel less like an astronaut and more like an aquanaut.
2024-02-06 10:32:11
Soph Dyer
Children's play area in Diepoldpark, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Blustery, blue and spring-like. The wind was so string this morning, it almost blew me off my bike.
2024-02-05 20:36:24
Soph Dyer
At home, on the window ledge., Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Turbulence: outside, between me and my partner, in my body. I saw on a forecast map that the jet stream is between me and Sasha. The winds leaving London appear to arrive in Vienna. I like this thought, that we are asynchronously sharing the same air. I imagine messages, aeroplankton (Luftplankton), and water vapour moving between us.
2024-02-04 19:08:31
Soph Dyer
In a field by the motorway, somewhere outside Klagenfurt, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Today I swam in an alpine pool next to melting ice. I am recieving this image a dark hill, by a motorway, under the stars.
2024-02-03 18:10:42
Soph Dyer
Near Pontebba, Friuli, Italy
Italy
NOAA-15
We are in the mountains but it is above freezing. A thin layer of water covered the last of the melting snow. In Vienna last night, the wind was so strong it crashed against the bedroom windows, keeping me awake. After working on open-weather during the day, I was too excited too sleep deeply anyway.
2024-01-31 11:45:19
Soph Dyer
Gefechtsturm Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Open skies and bird song – almost spring like. I did not weather my thermal leggings under my trousers today! At first I thought that I'd made a mistake but quickly I warmed up and enjoyed the free feeling of air on my legs.
2024-01-30 21:46:34
Soph Dyer
Dornerplatz, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I worked from home so didn't leave my flat until the evening. Today was dry, clear and cold, but not too cold – you could take your gloves off without your fingers hurting. The stars were bright.
2024-01-29 20:20:46
Soph Dyer
Entrance of Augarden, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
It's clear and cold again, when I left for work this morning the rooftops were frosted white. Frost always takes me back to childhood. When there was a heavy or hoarfrost, I would go out before school to slide down the field opposite our house on a tray. Sledging on frost felt more risky, edgy, than on snow – the frozen ground could easily inflict bruises. It was also a sport no one else seemed interested in, so I had the field to myself – bold and alone.
2024-01-28 20:35:07
Soph Dyer
Inside with the antenna strapped to a curtain rail, tied to my balcony in Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Beautifully sunny. The woods are free of snow and ice, and full of walkers. I went on a solo hike in the Wienerwald, stopping for lunch at Toiflhütte, and breathing plenty of Waldluft. The birds continue to sing. I heard blackbirds, crows, wood peckers, a jay, and small song birds. The temperature is a frosty 5 degrees centigrade, with no wind.
2024-01-27 22:26:10
Soph Dyer
On my balcony, freezing my ass off, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Cold, but only because I didn't expect to stand outside, so I didn't have my coat, hat and gloves on. More bird song today. I was around 7 Centigrade. Clear, clear skies. So many stars.
2024-01-26 19:06:51
Soph Dyer
Augarten, near the gun towers, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Today, the bird song was louder than the beep-beep of the satellite. Gardeners in the park were clearing the dead leaves into piles. I heard that it's better to leave them to decompose and return their nutrients to the trees from which they fell – they don't kill the grass. The temperature is mild and there is no wind, but there is a heavy blanket of cloud. Although it is nearly midday, the cars have their headlights on. This evening I willl go to the 'Defend democracy' protest outside the Austria Parliment.
2024-01-25 21:31:00
Soph Dyer
My bedroom, Wien, Austria
Austria
Silent migraine.
2024-01-24 19:06:51
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wiem, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
It almost feel warm today. In the afternoon, it rained but I was inside the studio so didn't notice until I saw the wet pavement. My body also feel springy-ier, the migraine and stiffness I've had since Saturday is receding.
2024-01-23 21:33:09
Soph Dyer
On the North West corner of Diepold Park, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
I think heard a Great Tit calling this morning. It rained today and feels milder. I was meant to be on a night train to the Netherlands this evening but German train drivers have walked out. They will be on strike until Monday. I have cancelled my trip. Life feels turbulent at the moment.
2024-01-22 20:08:39
Soph Dyer
Leaning out of the Northeast facing window of my flat, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I have been inside most of today. The weather inside is stuffy.
2024-01-21 20:19:49
Soph Dyer
The balcony of my flat, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Frosty, slowly defrosting. This morning, I woke to a blackbird singing. There is still snow on the ground in the woods. Sasha and I have been receiving NOAA satellite imagery everyday for one month!
2024-01-20 20:32:35
Soph Dyer
Inside my bedroom! Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
It's clear but cold. I'm still feeling unwell (again!) that I think it feels colder to me than it actually is. I stayed inside during the satellite pass.
2024-01-18 08:13:21
Soph Dyer
The balcony of my flat, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
So icy underfoot! My body felt sluggish this morning from a lack of sunlight and and my period. I ventured outside only to grip the v-dipole antenna to the balcony railing and then stayed inside for the duration of the satellite pass.
2024-01-18 09:26:57
Soph Dyer
The balcony of my flat, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I tried the loop antenna again, this time squashing it into a folded dipole. The result was not good. Despite the near overhead position of the satellite, I could barely hear its transmission. I experimented with orientating the antenna vertically and horizontally. The temperature feels a warm 2–5 degrees this morning. It is raining lightly. Over WhatsApp, my brother sent a photo of the sun rise off the coast of Cornwall. In return, my mum shared a photo of her frosty garden. In both photos, the sky was clear. Yet an hour later my sister’s partner sent a video of large snow flakes falling in Truro. The weather in the UK is so much more changeable than in Austria. Here we have steady, continental weather. British weather is sea weather.
2024-01-17 09:39:48
Soph Dyer
The balcony of my flat, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Cold, small, icy snow flakes. I had to keep my laptop inside. I used the loop antenna, elevated by a curtain pole to 1.5 metres. The antenna was highly directional, and so was challenging to keep tuned to the satellite. There is still pockets of snow on the rooftops. It feels around –3C outside. It wasn't forecast to snow today but the clouds are a pale white-grey and city has the deadened acoustic quality of a snow day. The light level is low.
2024-01-10 08:48:00
Soph Dyer
Carnegieplein, Peace Palace, The Netherlands
The Netherlands
Lizzie and I stood outside the Peace Palace. Its public square was the closest the open space to our apartment. But we had also retuned out of curiosity to record the atmosphere before tomorrow’s court hearing. “The world will be watching The Hague,” several Dutch people had told me. On arrived, the square was empty except for people going to work or walking dogs. At the palace gates, security guards were using LED-lit mirrors to check the underbellies of vehicles. Perhaps this level of caution at the Court was normal? Lizzie and I assembled the antenna and tuned to the satellite's frequency. At first, a security man walked over and asked us to leave. We negotiated 10 more minutes. Annoyingly, we had not yet picked up a signal. I was about to begin troubleshooting when the a police car pulled-up. A police man asked for our IDs and took them into the patrol car, while his colleague stood, leaning on its open door. Still no satellite signal. Lizzie experimented with the position of the antenna, when she rotated it, I was sure that I briefly saw the telltale lines of the transmission. Cold, we gave-up, packed down, and waited for our IDs to be returned. Lizzie lamented having not pressing record: at least then we would have documented radio environment. As it was, we left twitchy from police check and without an image. From inside a nearby cafe, I tuned to the tension in my muscles and their alertness. Perhaps we hadn’t needed the radio antenna. Our bodies had picked up a tension in the air that I had failed to see.
2024-01-16 11:29:29
Soph Dyer
Augarten, Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
A piercingly clear day. Fresh. Chilly! I was glad to feel the sun on my face.
2024-01-15 21:29:44
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Cold, dark, damp. I feel "under the weather". Today, I stayed home and experimented with the loop antenna. To adapt the antenna to receive Very High Frequency transmissions, I squashed it into folded dipole. Despite what the online instructions recommended, this seemed to make things worse. I reverted to the open loop – the circumference of which is just under a half wavelength of 137 MHz. It okay but was highly directional. I will try again soon.
2024-01-14 20:03:14
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
I wore too many wooly layers! It was milder than I expected, around zero Celsius. My ground station was between the bins and the Austrian Post Academie. A few stars were visible between the clouds and light pollution. People hurried past: a dog walker, a parent and child, a runner. I have felt restless today. I asked Nicola about the weather: he says people are ice skating on the nearby pond in Türkenschanzpark.
2024-01-13 18:50:29
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Cold but clear. I enjoyed being in the weather because I have a new coat and I have been inside all day. Amazingly, the snow on the balcony is the same as when I left a week ago. I take pleasure in this stability because I am feeling disorientated: I did not sleep on the night train and I stayed in bed all today.
2024-01-12 19:22:06
Soph Dyer
Between Amsterdam and 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands
The Netherlands
NOAA-15
I am on the night train. The weather inside is controlled by a continuous cold draft from an overhead ventilation duct. I rigged my v-dipole antenna to the ladder for the beds, and tuned to NOAA-15 mid-pass. As the train sped between lit buildings, I could see the satellite dip in and out of reception. I finish the recording just before we reach the next station. I am thinking about how the current political climate renders some lives disposible, ungrievable. "An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all", wrote Judith Butler. Is this fascism? Golrokh messaged from Tehran. There is so much weather between us. At 's-Hertogenbosch, a woman paediatrician boards the train. She is wearing a blue surgical mask and says that she’s got the flu (later, she corrects, she thinks that she has Covid). Our shared compartment feels tense as we exchange gases, aerosols, and possibly virus. She is going on a skiing holiday.
2024-01-11 10:46:05
Soph Dyer
Eline Vere Park, Den Haag, The Netherlands
The Netherlands
NOAA-19
"GLOBAL SOLIDARITY CALL WITH SOUTH AFRICA. JUSTICE FOR GAZA, MANIFESTATION AND LIVESTREAM OF COURT HEARING. Bring banners and signs with text: 'No genocide, No ethnic cleansing, Anywhere', 'Justice for the Palestinians', IsraelOnTrial for its #GazaGenocide'" @free.palestine.nl Today, I am unable to organise my experience of the weather into the coherent report. At lunch, I stood in the park behind the ICJ and watched a live stream of South Africa's lawyers argue that Israel is intended to commit genocide. Outside it is still below freezing. A street away, the students are build antennas: Ice-tennas, Tree branch-tennas, Finger-tennas.
2024-01-09 11:13:34
Soph Dyer
Malieveld, Den Haag, The Netherlands
The Netherlands
NOAA-18
It’s bloody freezing! Today’s image is from the workshop demonstration. I am too brain-fried from teaching to write more.
2024-01-08 19:18:03
Soph Dyer
Peace Palace, Den Haag, The Netherlands
The Netherlands
NOAA-15
Brrrr. It is bitterly cold! I almost stopped the recording early because I couldn't feel my fingers despite my gloves. The sky was icy clear so I tried to spot NOAA-15, without luck I arrived in the Netherlands this morning after taking the the night train from Wien. I woke to thick snow flakes floating outside the train window. Inside the weather was toasty. It's no long snowing, but a wide current of cold air, coming down from Russia, is chilling Central and Western the Europe to the bone! Tomorrow I will wear my thermal leggings.
2024-01-07 08:21:24
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
White-grey sky. Not too cold. It began to snow just before the satellite pass, so I had to change plans and stay on my balcony, where my laptop could stay dry, instead of going to the park. I used a stretchy piece of plastic to weatherise my dongle.
2024-01-06 20:00:00
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Cold. It's been raining all day. I held my antenna out of the window.
2024-01-05 20:16:07
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Chilly and noisy (cars, mopeds, buses)
2024-01-04 07:54:36
Soph Dyer
Venice, Italy
Italy
NOAA-15
Chilly, damp morning air. It is misty on the lagoon. Cloudy, soft light, pastel colours. There is lots of radio frequency noise. The satellite's signal is weak, perhaps because of the noise or because my turnstile antenna is missing a pole.
2024-01-03 20:34:37
Soph Dyer
Fondamente Nove, Venice, Italy
Italy
NOAA-19
It is a beautifully still night on the Venice lagoon; overcast, but with good visibility. I captured the image from a floating pontoon on the Fondamente Nove. As the satellite passed overhead, the pontoon was rocked by passing Vaporetti. I made a sound recording of water and radio waves mixing with the and clinking metal of the pontoon and a man singing.
2024-01-02 22:17:00
Soph Dyer
Fondamente Nove, Venice, Italy
Italy
NOAA-18
Damp cold, overcast and dark. My second failed satellite pass! Nicola was helping but dropped one of my antenna poles onto the marble of Fondamente Nove, crushing the screw thread. I also for my USB adapter. I am very tired.
2024-01-01 11:15:10
Soph Dyer
Carezza, Italy
Italy
NOAA-18
There was heavy snowfall yesterday afternoon and overnight. This morning it is sunny and clear with no wind. I was able to take my winter coat off.
2023-12-31 11:38:40
Soph Dyer
Carezza, Italy
Italy
NOAA-18
Very cold, a few snowflakes in the air. I failed to press record!
2023-12-30 11:46:17
Soph Dyer
Lago Inferiore, Mantova, Italy
Italy
NOAA-18
Still, damp air, mild. Beautifully misty. Mottled sky.
2023-12-29 11:51:45
Soph Dyer
Near Mantova, Italy
Italy
NOAA-18
Low, thick cloud cover. The air was warm and moist. Low light despite it being nearly midday. Standing between the fields, there were no obstructions other than telegraph and electricity pylons. It was amazing to as “see” the southern boarder of Algeria.
2023-12-28 19:00:15
Soph Dyer
Bergamo, Italy
Italy
NOAA-15
It is my second night in Bergamo at same location but with my v-dipole antenna instead of the turnstile. Yesterday I learned that that the radio environment was noisy, however I was still surprising to receive no image. During the day Nicola and I observed an opaque haze hugging the alluvial plains of Lombardy. At dusk, a narrow slip of sky, frame by the haze below and clouds above, glowed blood red. Having heard how the Alps trap air pollution from the small factories on the plain, the red glow felt menacing.
2023-12-27 22:05:20
Soph Dyer
Bergamo, Italy
Italy
NOAA-18
Hazy, damp cold. First night in Bergamo.
2023-12-26 18:10:44
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-15
Dark, mild.
2023-12-25 09:20:08
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
Grey and so warm. It's Christmas (and my birthday). The horrors being reported from Gaza seem to be worsening: Heavy weather, lethal weather. Clouds maps are always moving. Clouds make visible our shared breath.
2023-12-24 09:29:15
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
windy, mild, a small amount of blue sky, it's Christmas eve!
2023-12-23 21:14:06
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-18
Mild, very windy, raining
2023-12-22 09:53:21
Soph Dyer
Wien, Austria
Austria
NOAA-19
clear skies after a storm, solstice sun, strong warm wind, wet wood of the balcony
2021-10-31 11:00:17
Sasha Engelmann Soph Dyer
The Photographers' Gallery, London, UK
UK
NOAA-18
We woke to the sound of sheet rain. The weather apps on our phones marked our location on the edge of cyclonic weather system, its eye over Ireland. A yellow weather warning was in place for the South of the England. On way to The Photographers' Gallery, our location for the satellite pass, a branch fell on the car’s windscreen. A man on the radio ranted about the hypocrisy of world leaders flying into COP on “their private jets”, while he was expected to holiday on the Gower Peninsula. An Extinction Rebellion spokesperson joined in, live from Glasgow, only to be thrown off message by hostile questioning. We were in heavy weather! The conversation in the car shifted to the more-than-meteorological weather, of London and the UK. What are the conditions that weigh and press on us and the people we know? London is vibrant with events and open pubs after years of lockdown, yet we know we do not weather the unfolding pandemic equally. There are signals of political and social movement. University workers are voting this week to potentially take strike action due to precarious labour conditions, an unacceptable gender pay gap and unequal policies in higher education. By the time we reached the gallery, the rain had stopped. During the satellite pass it was still grey and squally, but by the end of the pass there was bright blue sky. In background, the spinning screens of the BT tower announced the first day of COP26.
2020-09-06 03:52:02
Soph Dyer
London, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
NOAA-18