Preliminary test to push California weather station data onto a map using Processing. Taking sixteen Western Regional Climate Center (WRCC) stations from 1870-1900 and displaying their location and collected daily temperature information on the map as concentric circles (size and color). Thanks to WRCC for helping with collecting station information.
Reference: http://wrcc.dri.edu/csc/scenic/data/station_finder/
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water.
Cadillac Desert is a great book for anyone who wants to understand water in the west, and how we’ve created our modern water problems both in California, and in the greater Southwest region of the United States. While the book was published in 1993, the prescient issues echo today’s US water crises. Unveiling the political and economic decisions that underscore many of the choices made about water in the Southwest, helps provide a cautionary tale of the scaffolding supporting today’s water system.
Cadillac Desert was also turned into a TV documentary series that highlight four key components of water reclamation in the Southwest: Los Angeles water, the Colorado river and dams (i.e. water conservation projects), the environmental and political issues of water in CA, and water misuse around the country and the world. Below is the first episode of Cadillac Desert.
Taking inspiration from Shawn Decker’s Prairie (2013), a work that creates a natural system through 432 DC motors, tiny speakers, and relational rule-based code.
The tempescope is an ambient physical display that visualizes various weather conditions like rain, clouds, and lightning. By receiving weather forecasts from the internet, it can reproduce tomorrow’s sky in your living room.
Cornelia Konrads land art pieces contain individualized particles of natural objects. The structures reveal as they defy… Inspiration as applied to water droplets or chunks of dried dirt within the California water crisis.
http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/04/gravity-defying-land-art-by-cornelia-konrads/
