Weather Center for the Apocalypse / Future Satellite

An exhibition by Amelia Marzec at Harvestworks.

August 2 - 4, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 3rd from 7-9pm
Artist Talk: Thursday, August 3rd at 7:30pm

Weather Center for the Apocalypse is alert to an uncertain future. It is a sculptural installation that incorporates new media, performance, and participation. It predicts changes in our environment and culture that could affect the autonomy of citizens in the event of disaster.

It consists of a Weather Tower built primarily with local, salvaged materials, using simple science experiments as the basis for a fully functioning weather station. Environmental sensors monitor weather in the immediate area. News and alerts can be sent out over a personal satellite radio system called Future Satellite. It consists of a satellite dish, a model of a satellite, and a series of radio transmitters and receivers. It can be used to transmit underground music, on days when the apocalypse warnings are low. It will have a radio program running continuously that can be heard through listening stations in the gallery and picked up by FM radios within range.

The project creates an ongoing story on climate change, social change, and the future of media. A Meteorologist will take regular readings from the weather instruments and upload them to a forecast portal. Forecasts will incorporate sources both practical and fantastical, including satellite information, the farmer’s almanac, horoscopes, news of political unrest, and how often it has rained that month. They will rely heavily on news gathered by word of mouth, from videos contributed by visitors to the installation.

The project has been supported by Harvestworks, City University of New York, Flux Factory, University of Vermont, Rutgers University, and Materials for the Arts.

Amelia Marzec is an American artist focused on rebuilding local communications infrastructure to prepare for an uncertain future. Her work has been exhibited at SIGGRAPH, MIT, ISEA (Canada), LAPSody (Finland), ONCE Foundation Contemporary Art Biennial (Spain), NODE Forum for Digital Arts Biennial (Germany), and is part of the Rhizome ArtBase. She has been a resident at Eyebeam, a resident at Harvestworks, a fellow at New York Foundation of the Arts, the A.I.R. Gallery Emma Bee Bernstein Fellow, a Tow Fellow at Columbia University, a grantee of the Research Foundation of CUNY, and a nominee for the World Technology Awards for Art. Her work has been featured in Wired, Make, Hyperallergic, Neural Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, NPR, and the front page of Reddit. She holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design, and a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. She is a founder of the Radical Networks conference, has written for the Huffington Post, taught at Hunter College and Queens College, and has given talks at RISD, Barnard College, and the Queens Museum of Art.

Harvestworks is located at 596 Broadway #602, New York, NY 10012. Gallery hours: Wed.-Fri., noon to 5pm. For directions please visit www.harvestworks.org.

For more on the projects:
http://www.ameliamarzec.com/