Sarah Waterson

My current practice centres on developing data-driven artworks that produce poetic ecologies. This work critiques traditional politics and the power dynamics of knowledge through mapping. The emergent aesthetic and sense-making behaviours of the selected datasets create a system for generating meaning. Weatherscope is a reactive weather system designed to accept data via bluetooth and generate weather based on that data. In practical terms it consists of a bluetooth-enabled arduino board with custom electronics that control mist, water (precipitation) and lighting effects in a physical space.

Hothouse brings the weather system from Mount Kinabalu, Borneo to nurture a rare and fragile orchid, the Paphiopedilum Rothschildianum, named for the family who owns the world’s banks (including the Reserve Bank of Australia). This work invites the audience to consider the relationship between weather and capital, at a time where weather still impacts the global futures market, and where we are witnessing unprecedented changes in the Earth’s weather patterns. The installation provides an opportunity for reflecting on what aspects of culture we choose to feed and grow, regardless of the cost to the existing ecosystems, and explores the irony inherent in our technological solutions to support colonised landscapes