Here, I explore a method of working in meteorology – naked eye observation – that has been practiced at several thousand observatories all over the world for more than a century. It is used to document weather phenomena and cloud patterns. Since no technical device has yet been invented that can classify clouds automatically, this is still carried out by individual people observing the sky. Subjective cloud observations are encoded according to an internationally standardized cipher and entered into an observation diary. The data are utilized world-wide for scientific models of weather forecasting.
Based on the approach of naked eye observation, I develop an artistic process that elucidates the transition from observations into a system. I replace the observation of the clouds in the sky with a view into the cloud diary in which the Latin names for cloud classification are recorded. What do they tell me? I translate them into drawings without thinking of clouds as I do so; the drawings are free associations with the Latin terms. I fold the works produced in this way according to the same principle in each case and stack them chronologically.
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