New Scientist’s Culture Lab blog is one of our favourite places on the web to read about the intersections between art and science. They were kind enough to cover our recent London showcase, featuring some background on the piece and an astute observation of the similarity between Variable 4’s weather station and Futurama’s Bender

It also features Culture Lab’s first ever podcast, in conversation with James about the piece. Listen here.

Another interview has also been published recently on Dazed Digital, alongside some staggering photographs by Drew Cox. Read here.

Some exciting plans are also emerging for Variable 4’s next appearance, in the changeable autumn. More on this very soon.

We’re very excited to have one last addition to the night we’re curating this Wednesday at The Book Club. Writer and curator Daniela Cascella will be joining us on our sound art panel, discussing sound-related practices from composition and storytelling to the issues involved in curating, presenting, documenting and archiving live sound works.

In her words:

“Not being a musicologist or a musician, I never seek to examine the construction of a sound piece per se – I am interested, rather, in what comes after the piece: in the space between the work and what occurs around it. Working in the realm of sound and all types of leakage, expansion and cross-border transitions of sound toward other art forms, I also had to search for new ways of presenting sound and discussing it.”

Alongside an extensive history of curation, Daniela has written for Frieze, The Wire, Sound and Music, Il Giornale della Musica, and many more. We’re delighted to have her along.

On 22nd June, we are holding a Variable 4 showcase, discussion and post-Aldeburgh celebration at The Book Club, EC2. We’ll be presenting the piece and showing audio and video excerpts, demonstrating how it works under the bonnet and introducing some of the musicians and technicians involved with the piece.

Alongside this will be an informal panel discussion on sound in art, featuring some luminaries within the field: producer Joana Seguro (Faster Than Sound, Lumin), curator Cecilia Wee (Sound and Music, Rational Rec), BAFTA award-winning sound designer Nick Ryan (The Fragmented Orchestra, Papa Sangre), and writer and curator Daniela Cascella.

We’ll then be doing an eight-channel DJ set featuring some of the spatialisation methods devised for the piece — controllled with a windvane and anemometer interface. The world’s first meteorological DJing, as far as we know.

The event runs from 7pm on 22nd June, just off Curtain Road, Shoreditch.

• More info and advance tickets: The Book Club
• On Twitter: Joana Seguro, Cecilia Wee, Nick Ryan, TBC.

Here in our headquarters inside the Variable 4 windmill, we keep an ear to the ground for innovative and engaging weather-related artworks. We’re putting together a collection to publish shortly, but in the meantime, we couldn’t resist mentioning this piece. Merel Karhof’s Wind Knitting Factory is a mechanical device which harnesses wind power to produce a neverending scarf, which is occasionally harvested to produce wearable garments.

In a charming touch, the product is linked to the process with a label indicating the date and time taken to knit each garment.

The group’s blog includes a collection of images of urban windmills, and an adaptation of the idea into wearable brooches which convey the air movement created when the wearer moves around.

More:

• Merel Karhof
• Platform Two (RCA)

Selected photos from our 24 hours of Variable 4 Snape Maltings photographs, courtesy of Louis Mustill.

[View with PicLens]

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