“We Are Having Weather,” a social media project started by myself and Hege Dons Samset in June 2008, eventually encompassed the Weather Photos Blog, a video installation in Shanghai, and inclusion in the TransCultural Exchange 2009 program “Here, There, and Everywhere.”
“We Are Having Weather” provided a venue for contributors to share photographs that communicate their feelings about the weather and how it influences emotions or mood. The goals of the project were to explore visual communication, connect people in disparate parts of the globe, and use new technology to facilitate in-depth conversation.
In our role as producers, Hege and I solicited participants (primarily through various websites and email lists), then find each person a partner that they will share photos with for 2 weeks. Partners are matched based on their stated preferences and a desire to partner people from diverse weather zones.
The partners’ photos from one day build on those from the last, so that each series begins to show a path through the authors’ lives – through both their physical and emotional environments. All photos remained part of the blog, so that it became a reference for both weather and emotion, across geography and time.
Several months into the project we were invited by the Zendai Museum of Modern Art to take part in their year-long public art intervention, “Intrude366: Art & Life.” Our installation, in which we displayed sets of partner photos at a TV shop in Shanghai, took place November 7-13, 2008.
