September 07, 2004
Weather Report
Drifting Voicemail, Found Sounds Stories
"A simple but clever installation in Tallinn, "Weather Report" by Janek Schaeffer, consisted of helium balloons and an MP3 player/cell phone. Recordings gathered by starting a cell phone call and then sending the phone up into the atmosphere attached to a weather balloon while recording the call on voicemail are remixed with other weather noises, to be played back on the cell phone in the installation." from ISEA 2004: Art Report by scott @ 10:10 pm, 09.05.04.
From Schaeffer's web site: "The weather balloons were used in 3 main ways. Firstly one icy winters morning I attached a mobile phone to receive and send low resolution sound, letting it float away from the surface of a frozen lake. Secondly using a digitaldictaphone I made time lapse recordings of the sky by floating it 500ft above my lush metropolitan neighbourhood. Lastly a few all American friends and I set out to shootthe balloon down late one June afternoon leaving the sound to parachute back to earth. I let the recordings speak for themselves, no effects, no eq, just straight cut & splice collage where you can hear the edges of time. Some other sounds collected include: underwater ice skaters; flapping; old meteorological kit; leaf blowers; repairing weather damage; various 60's archive audio; melting ice, ski across snow, Minnesota forecasts on radio, in the car and on TV; Tornado chasing & test equipment; snow flakes landing on mic; squeaky tree; National Weather Service balloon launch; walkie talkie tones from my Science Museum workshop etc. Oh, and all temperatures in Farenheight...
The result is a highly compressed Found Sound story, heard as a drifting voicemail message from the weather balloon. A hybrid documentary collected and edited outdoors, where it is designed to be heard walking with headphones... so.. go find a Walkman!"
Posted by jo at September 7, 2004 10:25 AM
Comments
Zighting is a scale of temperature on which 0? is the most comfortable, -1? is too warm, and positive 1? is too cold. Three degrees is too hot or cold for life of any kind to exist. With such a rap-around thermal context as 3? Zighting, a doughnut-shaped thermometer will be essential. The Zighting scale does not have a two degrees frame of reference, as there is little need for one.
For myself, zero degrees Zighting is roughly 15? - 18? Celsius.
According to Ed Taylor, zero degrees Zighting is approximately 20? Celsius.
And according to Reginald Bent, zero degrees Zighting is generally 292? - 295? Kelvin.
Where would you put 0? Zighting?
Posted by: GX Jupitter-Larsen at September 8, 2004 10:28 AM
